Year: 1874

could 60 to masters crib and get corn as free men
their masters would not be obliged to feed them un-
less they worked. After having spoken to them in
this strain for few minutes q stawart plantation
hand who stood in the front rank Of the crowd and
had been listening attentively. turned around and,
as he elbowed his way among the negroes exclaimed,
in voice loud enough to be heard by them all:


"Humphl He's no Yankee; know him. he's
Confed. dressed up in Yankee clothes"


The manner in which the negroes locked into the
towns in the Summer Of 1865; how the Government
found it necessary to feed them and how they died
by the thousand is now matter of history.


But even if the blacks had been disposed to work
Immediately after they were set free, they were as
dependent upon the white people for employment as
the planters were upon them for the labor. They
had no land and very few Of them were capable Of
accomplishing anything without the direction and
support of the white people, The planter
who expects to make a crop of cotton or
corn, in this State, must have capital or
credit sufficient to enable him to feed his
hands during the season. The majority of the
Southern people had very little of either and even if
they had had both, it would not have been strange
If their first ventures under system Of labor 80
different from any they had ever been accustomed to
and under which the very persons who had been
their slaves were free and politically their equals
had been failures.


GOOD WILL BETWEEN THE RACES.


sometimes wonder, when all things are taken
into consideration, that the whites and blacks got
along at all together. The white people, accustomed
from infancy to command the blacks and exact from
them the most implicit obedience. could not in the
nature of things accommodate themselves at once
to the new order of things. They bore no i-wil to
the negroes and never have done 80. Aside from
M ha rota taiu
greatest confidence in their old masters, and during
my present visit to the South l have seen some of
the most touching exhibitions of the love and re-
spect of some of the white people for the old family
servants with whom they have been reared. Some
of the blacks the other hand, were insolent and
provoking in their conduct They had always been
and had only been restrained during the days of
Slavery by the fear of punishment. Others were
suspicious ready to break contract and leave
plantation in the middle of season if any misunder-
standing arose, and always thinking that they were
being cheated in their settlements. Is it strange
that the first attempts to build up the South were
failures especially aggravating to the men who saw
what little they had saved from the general ruin
daily melting awayf


have here sketched, very briefly, some of the
difficulties which stood in the way of revival of
industry in the South, at the close of the How
great these difficulties pen can tell and no
man can realize until he comes to the South and
makes study of the character of its people, white
and black Such knowledge the men IN Congress
who made laws affecting the South unfortunately
did not possess and suppose that. in the prevalent
state of public feeling at the time North and South
it was impossible for them to obtain 1t. They acted
on tue best information they could then obtain and
both sections We're, believe in some measure to
blame for the mistakes that were made.


To pursue this subject further and to enumerate
some of the evils that have arisen from'a msunder
standing of the state of affairs fhave described, and
to suggest some of the most obvious remedies,
would extend this letter altogether beyond proper
limit This task must therefore, be postponed until
another day. T. l. W.