The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-11-20
IN. Y. Tribune.I
The Negroes Still Slaves.

The letter which we published on
last Saturday from a correspondent
in Georgia, concerning the chain-gang
in that State, only touches upon one
phase Of a most successful and general
device used by the ex-slaveholders to
dodge the Emancipation Proclamation,
and to secure the labor, without
wages, Of the freed negroes. 1t is not
a plan confined to Georgia alone, but
is now in use in all of the Cotton
States, and up even as high as North
Carolina.
A negro accused Of petty theft,
guilty or not, is inevitably convicted
and sentenced to imprisonment, usu-
ally for years. The convicts are either
leased out to private contractors, as
our correspondent describes, or they
work for the State at making rail-
ways, canals, etc. When leased to
contractors; they are, Of course, given
to the highest bidder; and although
he pays usually but two or three cents
per day for their work, it is equally,
of course, to his interest to feed them
as cheaply as possible The horrors
of Andersonville are repeated, if the
accounts which reach us from private
sources be true, in the torture inflicted
on these poor Wretches by slow starya-
tion, added to any cruelties which
their brutal drivers can inflict. Be-
fore the war the cruelties and tyranny
of prison contractors in the South
were matter of common repute. What
must we expect now when the con-
victs are all freed slaves? In the case
of their employment by the State,
their condition is little better. Any
traveller along the railways now be-
ing built by the State in the Carroll
mas can see these miserable bands. of
half naked and half fed blacks, kept
at work under whip and gun through
the day, and quartered at night in
stockades too filthy for brutes.
Our readers can judge for themselves
how readily this plan fits in with the
necessities of the Southerner. There
is the negro, to whose services and
life he still feels himself entitled,
though cheated out Of them by the
Yankees" There is the work to be
done, for which he is unable to hire
labor at fair rates. What is easier
than to accuse the poor darl1ey of the
theft Of a chicken and so secure his
labor for years at the cost of 81 per
paid to the State, and such |
miserable fare as barely suffices to
keep the wretch alive? There is, Of |
course, under such a system no es-
pecial anxiety to let the convict free
at the end of his term. He is slave,
and a slave for as long as it suits his
lessee to hold him. If (as is often
done in the mountain districts) he at
tempts to escape, he is hunted like a
beast and shot like one One old man,
as we reported last week, was
torn to pieces by dogs in North
Carolina. Unfortunately, among
even the more humane Southerners,
"a dead nigger" is of too little account
to rouse any righteous Indignation
against the so-called law or its agents.
If this state Of things is allowed to
the negroes will, IN reality,
have little cause to rejoice in their es-
cape from slavery. In their former
condition it was the interest OF their
masters at least to keep them in health
md good condition neither to under
FEED nor over-work them. There was
| chance, too, that they would fall
nto kind hands. Now they are in
he hold of the very lowest of white
.itizens; men whom it pays to work
hem beyond their strength and to
tarve them, and who, too, have the
aw to support them in any cruelty
hey may choose to intlict. !