Laz, I think you have the rights of it. History's like everything else in life . . . you have some extremes but most folks are in the middle somewhere, among the shades of grey. I never knew my Grandpa Long but I knew his daughter in law, my great grandmother, very well (my great grandfather died very young of typhoid, leaving Nanny with two children and one on the way) and she always spoke very highly of him. Apparently he was a hard working rather close-fisted man (farmer and merchant) but very kind-hearted and shy. He told Nanny that he only once struck a slave - because he was "unmercifully beating a horse." I think that, to the extent he could be (given the times and the culture he grew up in) he was a humane master. (Had he not been, surely Bas would have "taken off" at one of any number of opportunities, e.g. on the way home from the war, or when the Yankees came through.)
I like that....