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A dear, respected friend of mine, who like myself grew up in the South and has spent many years in New England, said to me not long ago: `` I can't forgive New England for rejecting all complicity ''.

Being a teacher of American literature, I remembered Whittier's `` Massachusetts To Virginia '', where he said: `` But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown ''.

There is a legend ( Hawthorne records it in his `` English Notebooks ''.

And one finds it again in Thomas Nelson Page ) to the effect that the Mayflower on its second voyage brought a cargo of Negro slaves.

Whether historically a fact or not, the legend has a certain symbolic value.