Year: 1866

Prom the n T. Times, April 2O.l


Mr. w. l.. Sharkey Is certainly candid
witness at all sides In his remarks before
| the Reconstruction Committee, he gives a
high character 10 the Mississippi freedmen,
and testities that they are ambitious to hold
real estate; but concludes, "My expectation
concerning them is that they are destined 10
extinction beyond doubt" This would
sound cruelty enough, had not Mr.. Sharkey
alluded to the great mortality that has
prevailed among Them" giving il as his
| opinion that there are little over ODe-half as
many freedmen nov in Mississippi as there
were formerly slaves We do not find it
hard TO believe that, in State so thorough
ly ravaged by the war, quite as many blacks
persisted as rebels; but, considering that
there used to be over 100000 slaves in Mis-
sissippi, Mr.. Sharkey's figures demand a
census. 70 is quite startling II one-haf or one
third IN Mr. Skdrkeys estimate hare been dying
of. We know that recent destitution has
thinned the ranks of both black and white,
the former chiefly but absolute extinction
does not sort with disposition to acquire
real estate What, then, has been killing
the blacks? Is it war ? or reconstruction
N Y. Tribune


War, and its attendant evils, beyond all
doubt, is what has been '9Silling the blacks"
Judge Sharkey is not alone in the opinion
that one-hGf the negroes of Mississippi have
perished since the war began. Gen. Grant
has expressed the opinion that One-tOurth Of
all the negroes in the South have thus been
destroyed. Gov. Aiken, of South Carolina,
who did everything in his power TO care for
and protect his people after the war had set
them free, says that out Of 900 not 300 re-
main alive. The same proportion of deaths
among them obtains all along the coast and
on the Sea Islands, and in the interior, away
from the principal towns, on plantations,
where all agricultural labor was arrested
and no other kind supplied its place, the
mortality is known to have been terrible. 1t
was greater among the blacks than the
whites, beyond doubt, for the obvious reason
that their condition as slaves had made them
more dependent-that they had no resources
to fall back upon, and no frieLds, but their
old masters, who were drafted for the war,
to care for them, and that the old, decrepid
and sick among them were thus of necessity
abandoned to starvation and death.


1t is probable that the great mass of those
who have thus perished were of this class,
and that among the younger abler-bodied
blacks the mortality has not been greater
than among the whites-perhaps, indeed,
not 50 great, inasmuch as they were not ex-
posed to the same perils and casualties of
the war. That those who are left should be
Ambitious TO own real estate" is both natu-
raj and laudable, nor do we see that it con-
hicts in the least with the opinion of Judge
Sharkey as 10 the mortality of the Southern
blacks.


Whether his Expectations" as to their
future extinction Is well-fnunoed or not
must depend, we think, upon their relations
with the whites. They are adapted to the
climate; they understand the work requisite
for their support; their labor will be in
greater demand and better rewarded than
ever before, and there is nothing in the ma
ture of the case TO render life more preca-
rious among them now than it was before
they were made free. But it cannot be de-
MED that the relations which are to exist
between them and tho whites are, in this re-
spect, as In all others, Of the utmost impor-
tance, and should take precedence of all Sc
condary matters in the public mind. 1t is
on this account partly that we have ques-
toned the wisdom of those who demand
suffrage for the Southern freedmen as the
first step and condition sine qua non of resto-
ration.


In the present state Of the Southern mind,
universal negro suffrage forced upon the
Southern people would inevitably increase
the prejudice and hatred which are assumed
10 exist toward the negro race, and would
thus lead 10 collisions and conflicts which
could not fail to prove disastrous to the
weaker party, Now that slavery is eX-
tinguished, there is no shadow of justice or
reason for excluding men merely on account
of color from all personal, civil and political
rights enjoyed by the great mass of the peo-
pie; but there may be very strong reasons
for care and prudence in the time and mode
of conferring those rights upon men hitherto
excluded from them. First let the relations
of capital and labor be made mutual, cor
dial and friendly, between the whites and
blacks let these become settled and estab
lished so that the dependence of each upon
the other shall be felt, as it soon will be
and all else win follow as a matter of course
by the voluntary cooperation Of beth classes,
and will thus give the best possible security
for permanence and stability,


We are afraid that our extreme men in
Congress and elsewhere, who are SO exacting
upon this subject, are beginning at the
wrong end, and that their policy, if success
iul, would prove injurious rather than BEN
eiicial to the class they seek to serve.