The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1867-07-03

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citizen Of North-C Carolina. variety of de-
licious vegetables. among which were pota-
toes as inealy as can be grown on our virgin
hill sides
* These people of whom I speak had been
taught to believe that cotton was the one
thing to the production of the South should
devote itself, and that corn, as food 1or
mules and niggers," might. with proprlety,
be raised when cotton could not. A former
Southern leader said to me:-"We bougnt
niggers and mules to raise cotton, and ralsed
cotton to buy niggers and mules" and l
good humoredly replied, Yes. and your
continuous culture of cotton having eaten
up your land, your niggers and mules were
about to eat you when you begun the war.
daughter and applause.) Thus It came tnat
restitution and despair brood over the sunny
South, while its unequaled water-power runs
to waste, and its widely diffused and mex
lIaustable mines, of gold, silver, copper, lead,
iron. &c. &c. and coal to work them, all lie
undisturbed where nature had dsposited
them.
There are in North Carolina, as the census
shows $4,000 white adults who cannot reao,
and in Virginia, $4,000. These figures, !
apprehend, indicate the general condition OF
the South in this respect. In their Ignorance
the masses have been swayed to their ruin
by the wealthy and ambitious men who dwen
among them. They will gladly enrich them
selves by adopting our methods and pursuits
when they come to understand them. When
I told them that they worked harder than
we, and at more exhausting labor, that we
lifted the toll that bowed them from the
shoulders of man and devolved it upon coal
and iron, and that without swinging the
heavy scythe we made machinery NOW and
reap our fields, many of them looked incred-
ulous.
To sustain my point invited their atten-
ton to what they had all seen, that ingeni-
ously contrived mass of iron, a locomotive,
and begged them to note how it would,
when animated by a little water from one of
their purling brooks, and little coal from
one of their Astounding beds, under the gui-
dance of q single man, move, at speed
greater than that of race horse, masses of
freight which their mules and niggers could
not move.
You ask what are the chances of improv-
ing these people. The great difficulty in the
way is their indifference to, or contempt for
education. In this they contrast most
strangelywith the freedmen and their children.
The white people seemed to be indiffer-
emit to education, but at Memphis, New Or
leans, Montgomery, Atlanta, the four cities
of North Carolina and Danville, Virginia,
we visited freedmen's schools, and do but
state the simple truth when I say that if we
do not establish schools, and contrive some
means to induce the white people of the
South to educate their children, the colored
people will,-in five years, be their superiors
intellectually.
| By day the freedmen's schools are crowded
with chiden from five years upwards, and
days work is over The story of one black
man was this THAT he had come into the
school, and asked whether he could stay
!. there until he could get an education. He
was asked in return who would support him.
81 will support myself while l stay" said
he, Il got a little piece of land, and made a
good crap and sold it we'll; l have come
for an education while my brother works the
land on shares Iwant to stay here until
can get an education" Now he is the first
scholar in one of the finest classified schools
I ever saw.
Another remarkable thing in these schools
is tie large proportion of white pupils found
in them. This, doubtless, surprises you, af-
ter what have just said. That is because
you have not visited many of the cities of
the South, and suppose that the question of
the color of person depends on prismatic
rays, on pigments, or on chemical combina-
tons. That is delusion. Throughout the
South the color of human being is not q
question of science, hut of tradition; and the
teachers of one freedmen's school, in which
there was no pupil that had not been slave,
assured us that quite twenty-five per cent. of
the scholars would be recognized as white
people in any part of the North. This gives
you the key to the abandonment by the
Southern leaders of the narrow dogma that
slavery was the true position of the negro,
and their assertion of the broad doctrine
that slavery is the true position of the lab0rer.
This occurred about 1S47, and l remember
inviting the attention of such of you as then
heard me, to it, on the 18th of September,
1856. in my address at Spring Garden Hail.
Promiscuous intercourse had already expelled
the blood of Africa from the veins of so ma
ny of their slaves that they were compelled
to take this position or fail to cover their
most valuable property by their logic.
But you ask, what is the spirit and tenn
per of the Southern people? There is, doubt
less, a great deal of sullen discomfort. The
time has not yet come when it would be safe
to withdraw the military. Not but that
there are large portions Of the South that
are well regulated and orderly, without any
troops within fifty or hundred miles of
them. l have referred to Danville. The
nearest post to that town, at which troops
were stationed, were seventy-three miles, and
yet order prevails there and in the vicinity,
as perfectly as at the large stations.
Intelligent people all over the South are
welcoming intercourse with the North, are
subscribing to Northern Republican, Agri.
cultural and Religious newspapers, and are
in political sense, asking earnestly and
prayerfully, what must we do to be saved.
The colored people understand themselves
and the questions at issue thoroughly. They
need no Northern missionaries among them
If the North will educate them that is all
they want, to be freed from the shackles Of
ignorance. The political work there will be
better done by themselves than through
Northern visitors. They have among them
orators that would surprise those who assert
the intellectual inferiority of the race L.
Berry, of Alabama, who did not know his
letters when the war ended, is said to be one
of the most remarkable orators in the United
States; and it is claimed that, if he makes 4
tour through the North, he will rival Fred
Douglass, with all his scholarship and for
-eign travel.
In North Carolina, q colored man named
Harris has the reputation of being the ablest
popular orator in the State. James Simms
the brother of Thomas Simms, the slave WHIT
was taken from Boston in triumph, is sale