The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-29 00:00:00

white men. "Scoundrels!" he said, " you have been
deluded by the noisy Abolitionists. You ought to
be glad to pay for the privilege of fighting, instead
of squabbling about money. You are a race of slaves.
A few years ago your fathers worshipped snakes
and crocodiles in Africa. Yonr features partake of
a beastly character. Your religious exercises in this
camp are a mixture of barbarism and Christianity.
Your features cannot be improved. Your yellow
faces are evidence of rascality. You should get
rid of this bad blood. My advice to you—the
lightest of you must marry the blackest woman,"
and so on. It is possible that negro soldiers may
not object to being addressed in this ruffianly style,
but it is evident that they do object to receiving
less pay than Irishmen and Germans, and very
doubtful, if this cause of dissatisfaction be not re-
moved, whether the existing black armies of the
Federal Government will not very speedily be
diminished by other chances than those of the
hospital and the battle-field.
The condition of the second class—that of colo-
nised negroes—and of freedmen or fugitives set to
work by the lessees of the Federal Government on
the abandoned sugar and cotton plantations on the
Mississippi is even more important in its bearings
on the future history of the American negro. The
numbers of this class are not exactly known ; but
they are great enough to have compelled Mr. Lin-
coln, in a special Message to Congress, to confess
his inability to deal with so difficult a problem as
their subsistence. Upon one part of the subject some
painful disclosures have just been made by a wit-
ness whose animus no Abolitionist can complain of,
and whose opportunities and capacity for forming a
correct judgment are not to be denied. Mr. Yeat-
man, President of the Western Sanitary Commis-
sion, charged with the duty of reporting to the
Federal Government on the condition of the freed
Africans who have escaped from Southern slavery
and been employed to cultivate for Northern account
the abandoned plantations between Cairo and
Natchez, states that there are about 25,000 of these
unfortunates in his district. He visited 21 farms,
plantations, and camps, in which the negroes were
either employed by Northern taskmasters, who had
leased the estates from the Federal Government, or
were huddled together for such protection and sup-
port as the Federal authorities could afford them.
Mr. Yeatman's report is uniformly unfavourable.
Within the city of Memphis the white employers of
their labour offered them 10 dols. a month for work
worth 45 dole.; and if they did not accept it they were
left to starve. The coloured firemen or stokers on
board a steamer plying on the Mississippi at
Memphis receive 45 dols, a month, and were afraid
to go ashore lest they should be seized by Federal
agents and forced to work for less than a quarter of
that sum. " The poor slave," says Mr. Yeatman,
" was promised freedom ; but how is it with him ?
He is seized in the street, and ordered to go and help
to unload a steamboat, or sent to work in the
trenches, or to labour for some quarter-master, or to
chop wood for the Government. He labours for
months (for his mere rations) and at last is only paid
with promises, unless perchance it may be with
kicks, cuffs, and curses, Under such circumstances he
feels that he has exchanged one master for many.
These continued abuses sadden and depress him,
and he sighs to return to his former home and owner
who at least fed, clothed, and sheltered him." Mr.
Yeatman relates many facts in corroboration, all of
the same character, and at all of the plantations,
showing that the white lessees strive invariably to
get the utmost positive amount of work out of the
negro for the smallest possible amount of wages; that
if a negro becomes ill his pay immediately ceases, and
he is turned adrift to starve, which was not the case
when he was in a state of slavery. He furthermore
proves by a variety of instances that the truck sys-
tem in its most odious form has been introduced,
and that the free black labourer is forced to buy from
his white employer every article he requires at ex-
orbitant prices, which are deducted from his wages
—shoes worth a dollar a pair, at two dollars and a
half ; calico, worth 24c. ayard, at 75c. ; and other
articles in the like proportion. At a place called
Young's Bend Mr. Yeatman saw an encampment of
coloured men, women, and children to the number of
2,100, under the charge of a coloured regiment. He
describes them as living in miserable huts, tents, and
hovels, amid more squalid suffering and destitution
than he ever before witnessed. The sickness and
deaths among them were most frightful. During
the summer from 30 to 40 died in a day, and as
many as 75 on an average daily during the latter
half of August. At Natchez another camp of about
2,000 people was in the same condition ; and hun-
dreds of freedmen had escaped from it to return to
their former masters. The camp originally con-
tained 4,000 persons, bat had been reduced by
deaths and voluntary withdrawal to the smaller
number; death, however, and not desertion, being
the prime agent of diminution, as might be seen by
the graves stretched along the river for miles be-
tween Milliken's Bend and De Soto. In conclusion
Yeatman states as the result of his experience,
that the negroes who cannot obtain work are dying
off, and that those who do obtain it are in a state of
involuntary servitude (i. e., slavery) far worse than
that from which they have escaped.
This is a deplorable picture. But perhaps one
equally hideous is to be exhibited in the condition
of the fugitives and freedmen who, with their wives
and families, have thronged into the national capi-
tal to ask the aid of that paternal Government
which loved them so much as to emancipate them
from bondage, and from which they expect not
only a barren blessing, but bread. There is no em-
ployment for a tithe of them in Washington, and
they are huddled together like vermin in camps and
hospitals beyond the boundaries of the city,—men,
women, and children indiscriminately, where they
are fed at the expense of the Government. Small-
pox has broken out among them, and in so virulent
a form that they die off at the rate of hundreds in
a day'. It is no uncommon thing to see the poor
creatures lying in the snow in the public streets
in the last agonies of death, and still more common
to see them wandering about with the unhealed
and still prurient marks of the disease visible all
over their hands and faces. So prevalent is the
disease that the life of the President himself was
nearly sacrificed a month ago, and within the last
week one member of the Senate and one member of
the House of Representatives have fallen victims to it.
In consequence of the dread of contagion the New
Year's reception at the White House was more than
usually scanty, such persons as were compelled to
pay their respects to the President hurrying into the
rooms and out into the open air as fast as possible,
and without even exchanging the compliments cus-
tomary on the occasion. Some timid persons sacri-
ficed their courtesy to their fear, and shook hands
with Mr. Lincoln without taking off their gloves;
while others, instead of the usually boisterous salu-
tation of American good-will, were content with
holding out the tip of the forefinger for a hurried
touch and an equally hurried " Happy new year to
you, Mr. President !" Nobody will go to Washing-
ton who can stop away, and those whom business or
duty calls within its infected precincts take care to
be vaccinated before they go. It is calculated that
there are at least 10,000 cases of small-pox in the
city and neighbourhood, all among or derived from
the negroes, and great fears are entertained that the
disease will spread to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and
New York. The:Government knows not what to do.
The emancipation proclamation has ' brought the
black swarm to Washingtot, and Mr. Lincoln can-
not be guilty of the inhumanity of refusing them
admittance, and food, if they cannot find work, and
has not yet been able to devise the means for main-
taining them in idleness, comfort, cleanliness, and
health in their city of refuge. The case, is all but
hopeless. The only remedy appears to be that which
fate is supplying—the death of the unhappy fugi-
tives. This is but a sad result of a great philan-
thropic effort; but it ought to teach the professional
and pulpit philanthropists caution, if it teach them
nothing else.
There remains only to be considered the condition
of the negroes who have emigrated to the Northern
cities in search of employment. The case may be
summed up in a few words. There were no vacancies
in the labour market which they were competent to
supply. Formerly the negroes found occupation in
the North as waiters, barbers, porters, and white-
washers. But now the Irish and Germans have
nearly driven them out of all these trades, except