The tri-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1866-1868, 1867-06-27

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.. Southern leader said to me we bought
niggers and mules to raise cotton, and raised
cotton to buy niggers and mules" and
good humoredlv replied, 6 Yes, and youl
, 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 1t came that
tlestitution and despair brood over the sunny
South, while its unequaed water-power runs
to waste, and its widely diffused and mex
haustabIe Mines of gold, silver, copper, lead,
iron, &c. &C., and coal to work them, all lie
undisturbed where nature had deposited
Them
There are in North Carolina, as the census
shows, Al 900 white adults who cannot read,
and in Virginia, "a, 900. 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 dwell
among them. They will gladly enrich them
selves by adopting our methods and pursuits
when they come to understand them. When
1 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, locomotive,
and begged them to note how it would,
when animated by little water from one OF
their purling brooks, and a little coal from
one of their Astounding beds, under the gull
dance of single man, move, at speed
greater than that of a 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 inditter-
ent to education, but at Memphis, New Or
leans, Montgomery, Atlanta, the four cities
of North Carolina and Danville, Virginia,
we visited treedmen's schools, and do but
state the simple truth when say that ii 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, i'll five years, be their superlors
| intellectually.
By day the freedmen's schools are crowded
with childen from five years upwards, and
| Will IlCu dul NOllCll At lSuI dltSl luSii
DAYS work is over The story of one black
school, and asked whether he could stay
there until he could get an education. He
was asked in return who would support him.
Il will support myself while l stay" said
| he Il got a little piece of land, and made
| good crap and sold 1t well; have come
| for an education while my brother works the
land on shares. / want to stay here until
can get an education" Now he is the first
scholar in one of the finest classified schools
l ever saw.
Another remarkable thing in these schools
is the 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-
tions That is a delusion. Throughout the
South the color Of human being is not a
question Of science, but of tradition; and the
teachers of one treedmen'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 LabOrer.
This occurred about 1847, and l remember
inviting the attention of such of you as then
heard me, to it, on the 10th of September,
1856. in my address at Spring Garden Hall.
Promiscuous intercourse had already expelled
the blood of Africa from the veins of so ma
ny of their slaves that they were compelled
m take thiC noSitinn fail tn 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, great deal of sullen discomfort. The
time has not yet come when it would be safe
tc 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. I have referred to Danvlle. 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. S
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 a
tour through the North, he will rival Fred.
Douglass, with all his scholarship and for
eign travel.
In North Carolina, 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 who
was taken from Boston in triumph, is said
to be gifted with the power of defamation
and invective almost beyond any living
American orator; and the people in every
town in which we were entertained did not
fail to bring to our notice men who were
their slaves two years ago, and whom they
recognized now as their political equals.
One gentleman, speaking of shoemaker,
said to me -" We ALWAYS knew that he had