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Such good people as the men who owned the Avondale Mills, who were the sons of the founder of the mills, who had been the Governor of Alabama just before the Civil War, and again after it, followed this policy. They told me that their father was a man who was not an aggressive proponent of slavery, but who grew up in an economic situation where it was an economic fact. He therefore accepted it, but long before the War Between the States he had freed all his own slaves. He was not a plantation man, but was, I think, a physician. He had urged others to also free their slaves, and there had been some improvement in that line. But, of course, he was an Alabama man, was for his state, and for his people, whether or not they agreed with him about his general philosophy about slavery, which was that the people who owned slaves should gradually release them and supply them with some way of earning their living. Thus the economic institution of slavery would gradually be abandoned. But when the war was over, he turned himself and his intelligence to the revival of life. He was not totally ruined by the war, although relatively ruined. He did have more money than some people had, however. He was elected Governor of the state, and at once he went to work to provide an economic life for the white people of his community.