Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?
Original passage & context
"Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Lawrence sits at our door, sleepy and respectful, and profoundly indifferent. So are they all, but they carry it too far. You could not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on in the bay, though it has been dinning in their ears night and day. People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?"
The day after the guns opened, an enslaver in Charleston looks at the people she holds and cannot read them — and half-guesses why. Every question in this feed since 1856 is in that last sentence, asked by someone who will not answer it. "Negro" is the source's word and period usage. One contiguous passage, no splice. Same 1905-edition caveat as se-049: revised in the 1880s from the 1861 journals.