The south-western. [volume] (Shreveport, La.) 1852-1870, 1867-05-15
Our Duty to Freedmen---Gen. Gordons Letter.

Our duty to the colored people may be briefly stated
as follows: In the first place. to secure them protec-
ton against evil-dsposed men in our midst who act
ing upon past prejudices, have not been sufficiently
patient with the license Of newly acquired liberty,
and who have been willing to wait for the slow
ton of the law but have chosen right themselv es
in cases of petty annoyance. Il is better that many
peccadoes should go unpublished than that any ile-
gal punishment should be inflicted. In the second
place, as part of our duty to the colored race, we
should show the most exemplary obedience to law,
for this is the highest civic duty The negro is quick
and initiative if original and reflective, and takes
the tone from his superiors in intelligence, with ia
clity unknown to any other people. In the third
place. they should be taught the relations of employer
and hired aborer that the interests Of the two
identical by higher law than any act of Congress- by
the laws of unerrng political economy This is now
being efectually done by those contracts which as
simulate partnerships, and in which the laborers
paid in shares of the crop. And in the last place,
they should be informed that there are political ennis
saries throughout the South who here to secure
their votes in the interests of political party, and
whose appeals and counsels have other effect
than an enlargement of the blacks to the injury Of
both races, for the present and the coming time.
Gen. J. B. Gordon, the brave and gallant officer
who commanded stonewall Jacksons old corps at the
end the war, and WHO'S now residing at Brunswick,
Georgia. issued an address to his "colored friends
warning them against the agitation from the North,
and assuring them of his "liyely interest in their
welfare. lie says:
l am in favor OF extending, by every possible
means every aid toward the moral and intellectual adj
vancement of the race, and think that peculiar cir
cumstances authorize to assert, with the most en-
tire confidence that such is the almost universal opn
ion of the Southern people. 1t my fortune during
the late war; in the Southern army to command young
men from almost every section OF the South. They
and their parents are my friends, and have been in
the habit wherever | have met them, of un Gliding
their views with great freedom to me on these and
kindred topics. assert, without reservation, that
recall instance of exception dissent to the
uniformity OF these expressions OF kind wishes toward
your people. Nor have found one who, when ques-
toned to his wishes in this regard has not emphat
ically declared that he would not vote you back into
Scvery had he the power to do so. They who assert
insinuse the contrary themselves the victims
of the bhdest delusion actuated by the worst mo-
tives 10 seeking to make different impression As
socating with you from childhood we have not to
subdue the prejudices and antipathes to your race
that belong to other sections. The white man of the
South ought to be, is, and will be- unless some
strange delusion should enter the brain and poison
the counses of the one the other partly in the same
section. Why should it be otherwise? Acquaintance
past association, in many instances mutual gratitude
and affection, well as the mutual dependence of dali
ly business relations, all conspire to bind them to-
gether. He who teaches you to regard interests
conflicting is not friend to your race. Our inter-
ests identical If the white is oppressed, his
colored neighbor must suffer with him. They are en-
barked together, and the cannot swim if the other
sinks. If Federal legislation should discriminate
against the labor of the South-if for instance the
Congress should exempt the great Northern staple
wheat-and place tax of three cents per pound on
the cotton of this section is it not obvious that the
tax falls on the bale raised by the colored man. on
the ten bales grown by his white neighbor?