D. W. Griffith - His Trust Fulfilled - Part Two 1911

Like many white Southerners (even now), Griffith romanticized the ante-bellum period as a social system that embodied conservative social values. Setting aside the brutality and constant debasement of slavery, Griffith emphasized self-sacrifice, loyalty, the "nobility" of labor . . .
In this popular short (you can find part on on Youtube here), a faithful former slave suffers terribly to fulfill a promise made to a master and see that his little charge makes a good marriage.

Significantly, Griffith uses inter-cutting to tell a story about the good old days of slavery--as he later did on a much grander scale in Birth of a Nation.