I. 
 
 T.HE 
 
 EMANCIPATED SLAVE 
 
 FACE TO FACE 
 
 in ' 
 
 WITH HIS 
 
 ' ' / 
 
 OLD MASTER. 
 
 1.11 
 
 __ r~-vr 
 
 v. c > : 
 
 » - **Xl' 
 
 I*— t. _ 
 
 r i 
 
 (;;) 
 i_- 
 
 0 
 
 (v 
 
 
 * V . 
 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 
THE MASTERSHIP AID ITS FRUITS: 
 
 THE 
 
 EMANCIPATED SLAVE 
 
 FACE TO FACE 
 
 WITH HIS OLD MASTER. 
 
 A SUPPLEMENTAL REPOET TO 
 
 Hon. EDWIN M. STANTON, 
 
 Secretary of War, 
 
 BY JAMES McKAYE, 
 
 Special Commissioner. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 WM. C. BRYANT & C0-, PRINTERS, 41 NASSAU STREET, CORNER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 1 8 6 4. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 https://archive.org/details/mastershipitsfru00mcka_0 
 
f/AJCoCKl if oo 
 
 3ZQ.tfo?73 
 
 THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE, 
 
 FACE TO FACE 
 
 WITH HIS OLD MASTER. 
 
 (Valley of the Lower Mississippi.) 
 
 To tlie Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, 
 
 Secretary of War: 
 
 Of all portions of the slave region to which the Commission 
 have had access, the valley of the lower Mississippi affords the 
 most interesting field for the observation and study of the slave 
 system, as well as of the great changes which, at the present 
 moment, slave society is everywhere undergoing. Unlike most 
 other sections visited by the Commission, here are found all the 
 elements of that society still in existence ; but in a state of revo¬ 
 lution and transformation. Here, facing the broad river on 
 either side, still stands the great white mansion of the planter ; 
 by its side, just without its shadow, the long rows of cabins 
 called the negro quarters, and, a little in the rear, the great 
 quadrangular structure, usually of brick, known as the sugar- 
 house. In many instances the old master still occupies the man¬ 
 sion, and the negroes their old quarters ; but under circumstances 
 and in relations quite new, strange, and full of anxiety to both. 
 
 During a recent visit to the neighborhood of these mansions 
 and negro quarters, many important facts came to light, and 
 many important suggestions occurred, not elsewhere presented. 
 
 In most other sections visited by the Commission, slave 
 society had been observed in a state of total disruption. Either 
 
4 
 
 the master or the slave, or both, had become fugitives. In South 
 Carolina, the masters had absconded, leaving their habitations 
 and their slaves. In Virginia and North Carolina, as well as in 
 many localities in the southwest held by our armies, the eman¬ 
 cipated could only be seen as fugitives, and the old masters not 
 at all. On the contrary in such portions of the valley of the 
 Lower Mississippi as are within our military lines, and especially 
 in the river region of Louisiana, many of them still stand face 
 to face in the presence of the great revolution, and of the trials 
 to which it summons both. 
 
 Before entering further into the considerations especially sug¬ 
 gested by the state of things here presented, it is important to 
 advert to some of the peculiar features of the slave system, as it 
 existed in this part of the country. 
 
 In the first place, the origin and character of the first settlers 
 of Louisiana and the Lower Mississippi had an important bear¬ 
 ing in modifying many of its features. These settlers were for 
 the most part, of French, Spanish, and Portuguese origin, or of 
 what has been called the Latin Pace, and it is said that the 
 people of this race do by no means entertain the same rooted 
 antipathies, and low consideration of the black race, as are gen¬ 
 erally ascribed to the races with a shade whiter skin. 
 
 However this may be, it is undoubtedly true that there is 
 found here a much more general admixture of the black and 
 white races than prevails elsewhere, even in the slave breeding 
 States. And all the evidence goes to show that there existed in 
 this region, especially in the earlier days of its settlement, a 
 much greater social ecpiality between the two races. No such 
 utter repudiation of the manhood of the negro race, existed here 
 as constituted the basis of the slave system in the islands and 
 coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Hence, although the 
 amount of labor imposed upon the slave was often greater, and 
 the system of punishments as cruel, yet their ordinary and 
 habitual condition was better, and their daily life on a higher 
 scale. They were not so rigorously forbidden the use of a family 
 name. Their habitations were much more like those of other 
 human beings. Usually their cabins contained not less than 
 
5 
 
 two rooms, and often four. They were furnished with some sort 
 of beds and bedding, and in their lodging those who considered 
 themselves man and wife were separated from the single; the 
 young, also, of different sexes slept in separate apartments; they 
 did not usually eat at a family table, but they had dealt out to 
 them, generally sufficiently cooked rations, which they might 
 eat as they chose—the cooking being done for the whole force 
 by regular details. On the other hand, “ the hours of labor on 
 the sugar plantations were from fifteen to eighteen per day, and 
 at certain seasons of the year a greater part of the night was 
 also occupied with labor. The hour of beginning work in the 
 morning was from 3 to 4 o’clock. The overseer was expected 
 to produce a certain crop with a given number of hands, and all 
 were obliged to obey him in preference to the master. He was 
 generally much more cruel than the master. Kind-hearted 
 masters sometimes select cruel overseers.” 
 
 I quote above from the testimony of Mr. J. B. Boudanez, a 
 free mulatto creole of Hew Orleans, a man of great intelligence 
 and probity, who had been employed as an engineer and me¬ 
 chanic upon many of the sugar plantations in the region of 
 country under consideration. Ho man could have had a more 
 thorough acquaintance with plantation life than he, and no 
 man in the city of his residence bears a higher reputation for 
 truth and sobriety. 
 
 He says, further, “ that upon some plantations the women 
 were worked as hard as the men, and in some instances were 
 kept at labor in every stage of pregnancy, even up to the mo¬ 
 ment of delivery. Sometimes they were sent into the field one 
 week after confinement; but ordinarily they w^ere given one 
 month in which to recover. Mothers were usually permitted to 
 nurse their children for a half hour three times a day for the 
 space of three months.” 
 
 Another witness, Dr. E. C. Hyde, an old physician who had 
 lived and practiced more than thirty years among the planters 
 of Hortli and South Carolina and in the Valley of the Missis¬ 
 sippi, upon his examination declared, “ that the slave women 
 were forced to labor from pregnancy to maternity. I have 
 known of births between the cotton rows; they were compelled 
 to hoe out their row, and then given an hour to recover.” 
 
6 
 
 u Many planters on the Mississippi do not wish to raise negro 
 children ; they would rather they would die than live—they do 
 not think it profitable. 5 ’ 
 
 “ As to chastity, 55 says Mr. Roudanez, “ no such thing was 
 known on the plantations. In the first place, the overseers had 
 the run of all the field women, and if one of them refused, an 
 occasion was very soon found for subjecting her to a severe pun¬ 
 ishment.' 5 a I have known 55 savs another reliable witness, 
 u women to be severely whipped for not coming to the quarters 
 of the overseer or master for the purposes of prostitution, when 
 ordered so to do. 5 ' “ The old masters usually made their selec¬ 
 
 tions from the house servants and the young masters generally 
 preferred for their concubines their half sisters. It was the com¬ 
 mon custom. They were usually taken at the age of thirteen or 
 fourteen. I have known girls to be mothers at that age. This 
 was especially true of French creoles. 55 “ Their own offspring, 55 
 says Dr. Hyde, “ were treated as slaves ; they were frequently 
 subjected to ferocious treatment, and sold, to put them out of 
 their sight. 55 “ The practice of indiscriminate sexual inter¬ 
 course, 55 continues Mr. Roudanez, “ was so universal that a chaste 
 colored girl at the age of seventeen was almost unknown.' 5 
 “ The planters’ habit of cohabitation with their slave women was 
 a source of great suffering to these women. Frequently the 
 jealous wife would procure them to be whipped or otherwise 
 punished upon false charges, and often when their husbands 
 were absent had them punished in their own presence." The 
 tortures sometimes inflicted upon these helpless favorites of the 
 husband by the infuriated wife, in order to render them less at¬ 
 tractive to the husband, are not to be described. “ The fact of 
 the promiscuous cohabitation was well known to both parents 
 and children.' 5 
 
 Xor were the puisliments less severe here than in other por¬ 
 tions of the slave region. Whipping with the paddle, scourging 
 with the whip of twisted bull's hide or knotted cords : torturing 
 with the heavy iron-horned collar and with heavy iron rings with 
 chain attached, worn upon the ankle for months; confinement 
 in the stocks in the dark cells of the plantation prisons, often 
 without food, and hunting with blood-hounds, were all practiced 
 here as well as elsewhere. “ Some whites," says Mr. Roudanez, 
 
7 
 
 iC made hunting slaves with blood-hounds a regular profession/' 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all this, there did exist among 
 these people a kind of human life, full, it is true, of the most 
 unheard-of toil, and of the most dreadful suffering, and yet, in 
 degradation, it did not approach by many degrees, the slave 
 life upon the shores of South Carolina. 
 
 Besides the circumstances already referred to, there were 
 others peculiar to this section of country, which had their influ¬ 
 ence upon the working of the slave-system, as well as on the 
 character of the slave population. The sugar culture, which, as 
 we have seen, at certain seasons of the vear, exacted the most 
 formidable labors, required also, for its successful prosecution, a 
 certain degree of judgment and skill in those employed in it. 
 A portion of the people on every sugar plantation had to be 
 mechanics and artizans. This had its effect in the development 
 of a higher general intelligence upon these plantations. “ Gen¬ 
 erally,” says Mr. Boudanez, “ upon every plantation there was 
 at least one man who had somehow learned to read a little, and 
 in secret used to read to the others, notwithstanding the severe 
 punishment always inflicted, upon the detection of such offences.” 
 “ On the day following that on which the news of the execution 
 of John Brown reached New Orleans, I started for a plantation 
 seventy-five miles up the river. Soon after my arrival there, a 
 slave gave me a detailed account of the execution. That morn¬ 
 ing a slave in the sugar-house had asked of his master a piece of 
 paper to wipe some portion of the machinery. lie handed him 
 a newspaper, the greater part of which he retained, and after¬ 
 wards secretly read it to the whole force. It contained an 
 
 e J 
 
 account of John Brown’s execution.” 
 
 Another fact had its effect. The sugar plantations of 
 the Valley of the Mississippi for the most part front upon 
 the river, or upon some bayou, navigable at least for flat- 
 boats, and in the rear abut upon interminable cypress swamps. 
 These swamps became places of refuge for the slave pushed 
 to the last extremity, very difficult of access even to the 
 master of the blood-hounds. Many instances are known of 
 slaves having lived for years in the recesses of these swamps, 
 thickly wooded as they are with great cypress and cotton¬ 
 wood trees, from whose branches hang suspended the long 
 
8 
 
 gray moss, covering them as with a veil. These, thickly 
 interspersed with an undergrowth of brambles, constitute an 
 almost impenetrable jungle. Sometimes they lived alone, 
 and sometimes in bands of a greater or less number, often 
 amounting to thirty, or even fifty persons, building for them¬ 
 selves, upon some little island of firmer ground, a lodging-place, 
 and communicating in the night, by secret paths, with their 
 fellows on the plantations. They subsisted by carrying off 
 the pigs, turkeys, and chickens, and sometimes they “ roped ” 
 into their hiding-places the sheep, or other cattle of the mas¬ 
 ters, butchered them, and exchanged portions of the meat with 
 their friends on the plantation for corn-meal. Their great 
 enemies in these swamps were the mosquitoes. In the night no 
 living creature can stand their bite. Cattle left exposed are 
 often killed by them. Every night they were obliged to keep 
 up a smouldering fire of cypress branches, the smoke of which 
 was their only defence against these hateful insects. 
 
 Many marvellous incidents and instances of heroism are re¬ 
 lated of these Mississippi Maroons. Mr. Alfred Jervis, of Hew 
 Orleans, one of the Executive Committee of the “ Free State 
 Association,” knew a man who had lived for three years in the 
 top of a large cypress tree, although often hunted by the 
 hounds. Mr. Jervis also related an instance of a less successful 
 refugee, who, for an attempt to escape, had his back flayed by 
 the blows of the twisted whip of dried bulbs hide, and was then 
 tied with his face to a tree, and left all night to be devoured 
 by the mosquitoes. In the morning some of his fellow-slaves 
 found him, covered with the gorged insects, quite dead. 
 
 Octave Johnson, now a corporal in Company C, 15th Regi¬ 
 ment of the Corps d’Afrique , as related by himself to a member 
 of the Commission, had lived with his band of thirty, (ten 
 women and twenty men), eighteen months in the swamps of St. 
 James’ Parish. His master, S. Coutrell, at present himself a 
 refugee in the quagmires of secession, had purchased him at a 
 great price, and had taken him to his plantation to make sugar 
 hogsheads; for Octave was a cooper. At the early dawn one 
 morning, Octave was found asleep at his bench. His allotted 
 task required him to be early at work. He had risen in the 
 first hours of the morning, and, repairing to his place of toil, 
 
9 
 
 seated himself upon his bench to wait for sufficient light to 
 begin his labor. “ I suppose,” said he, “ that I must have fallen 
 asleep ; for the first I knew I found myself lying on the ground, 
 sort of stunned, Massa standing over me with a big stick in his 
 hand.” Two stout slaves were ordered to take Octave to the 
 whipping place, and give him fifty lashes. 
 
 It should be understood that whipping, throughout all the slave 
 region, was by no means what is known by that name else¬ 
 where—not at all the same thing as that sometimes applied at 
 the North to refractory school-boys. In these slave communities 
 it had been reduced to a species of recognized art. Its imple¬ 
 ments were among the most prominent signs of slave civiliza¬ 
 tion, as Carlisle savs the gallows was, formerly, in England. In 
 the first place, the whips were of various kinds, according to the 
 exact effect intended to be produced. There was the whip of 
 knotted hempen cords ; the whip with the twisted lash of' dried 
 bull's hide; the coach-trace whip, and the paddle. “ Some- 
 times,” says Dr. Hyde, “ flat hand saws were used as whips." 
 Then there were various exposures and postures. Sometimes the 
 victim, stripped stark naked from the armpits to the heels, was 
 laid, face downwards, over a stout beam, supported upon 
 posts at the proper elevation, with the feet and hands fastened 
 with strong ropes to stakes driven firmly into the ground on 
 either side. In that posture one or the other of the above 
 mentioned instruments was applied, according to the ultimate 
 intention of the master. If he contemplated a future sale of the 
 slave, the paddle was generally used. This consisted of a broad 
 piece of heavy sole-leather, some fourteen or sixteen inches in 
 length, nailed to a convenient wooden handle. This only 
 bruised the flesh, without breaking the skin, and after some 
 weeks or months all signs of its use disappeared, and no suspi¬ 
 cion was aroused in any future purchaser, of the indocility of 
 the chattel. On the other hand, the use of all the other instru¬ 
 ments lacerated the flesh to a considerable depth, and left for¬ 
 ever after enormous ridges or welts. Often two were employed 
 to do the prescribed work, the first becoming too much fatigued 
 to make his blows heavy enough to satisfy the critical eye of the 
 on-looking master or overseer, was relieved by a fresh hand, 
 until the required number of blows had been all told ; and then, 
 2 
 
10 
 
 the arms being loosed, a pail of old beef or pork brine was 
 dashed upon the back. If the victim had fainted, this usually 
 roused him, and staunched the flowing blood. He was then set 
 at liberty, and allowed to begin his daily task in the cane or 
 cotton-field. 
 
 The operation was frequently varied by a change of posture. 
 Sometimes the victims were stripped as before mentioned and 
 bound to a tree or post. Sometimes, especially women in the 
 last stages of child bearing, were laid naked upon the ground, 
 face downward, with their arms and legs stretched out and firmly 
 bound to stakes, “ a hole, 51 says the witness, “being dug under¬ 
 neath large enough to admit the pregnant belly, 55 and then the 
 knotted or the twisted scourge, the coach trace or the paddle, was 
 applied as before mentioned. “ In some parishes, 55 says Mr. 
 Jervis, “ they have hired whippers.” 
 
 Of this nature were the incentives to life-long human toil, fur¬ 
 nished by a system that Bishop Hopkins and Prof. S. F. B. 
 Morse declare to be of Divine ordination. We read with espe¬ 
 cial wonder in the ancient Scriptures of a tribe of men who be¬ 
 lieved in the divinity of the god Moloch. We shudder at the 
 ordeal to which his worship subjected his votaries. That wor¬ 
 ship was doubtless the creation of a depraved and perverted 
 human intellect. Upon that primal age, however, the Sun of 
 BioJiteousness had not vet arisen. But this is the middle of the 
 
 O •' 
 
 nineteenth Christian century. What is to be said of the de¬ 
 votees of a divinity still more monstrous and cruel than the 
 ancient god of the Ammonites ? 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that what I have here been describing 
 was the ordinary mode of punishment, only whipping, and by 
 no means anything unusual or extraordinary. lS r or was the 
 spectacle witnessed alone by the old master and his overseer, but 
 frequently by the young masters and mistresses also, as in the 
 case of the South Carolina planter, referred to in the main report 
 of the Commission. 
 
 But, to return to Octave. He said: “ I had never been whip¬ 
 ped, but I had heard the blows and the groans of the others, and 
 I made up my mind quickly to run for the swamp which lay a 
 mile or so in the rear of the sugar house. 55 Being a fleet runner, 
 Octave outstripped his pursuers, reached the swamp, and 
 
11 
 
 plunged into its jungles. After some days he found the band of 
 refugees with whom he afterwards lived. Of course his master 
 did not mean to lose so valuable a chattel. Accordingly he sent 
 for a famous professional slave-hunter, Eugene Jardeau by name, 
 and hired him with his pack of twenty hounds to recover the 
 fugitive, dead or alive. 
 
 His friends on the plantation having given him and his com¬ 
 panions timely notice, the band immediately set about prepar¬ 
 ing for the struggle. Two or three of them took the women, and 
 by making a long “ detour ” secreted them in a place of safety, 
 returning upon their own tracks to the path that led to their 
 former hiding place, having (carefully rubbed the soles of their 
 feet with the feet of rabbits, with which they had previously sup¬ 
 plied themselves for this purpose, and dragging these after them 
 to deceive the scent of the hounds,) with clubs in their hands 
 they waited at the point of junction for the attack. All day 
 they stood together and fought the hounds, slowly retreating 
 farther and farther into the swamp. They succeeded in killing 
 eight of them. Towards sun-down, becoming thoroughly ex¬ 
 hausted, with their arms and legs torn by the fangs of the dogs, 
 and having lost much blood, the word was given to scatter and run. 
 
 “ Sauve quipent.'' Octave and four or live of his companions 
 made for a bayou in the rear. Under the headway of men 
 fleeing for life, they reached the bank to discover that its shallow 
 waters, obstructed by great roots and fallen trees, were full of 
 alligators. They could not stop if they would—they made the 
 leap and scrambled through. The hounds followed, and the alli¬ 
 gators, not touching the negroes, attacked the dogs with great 
 fury, killing six of them. 
 
 Mr. Jardeau coming up, and seeing how matters stood, 
 hastily recalled what was left of his pack. Octave and his com¬ 
 panions escaped. Xot one was killed or taken. He was asked 
 how he explained the fact that the alligators did not even 
 attempt to attack him and his companions, but fell upon the 
 hounds with such voracitv. He answered : “ D'un no, Massa. 
 
 Some ob ’em said dey touglit t’was God ; but, for my part, I tink 
 de alligators loved dog’s flesh better'll personal flesh” 
 
 Some few months after this battle with the blood-hounds in £ ^ 
 
12 
 
 tlie swamps of St. James’ Parish, another battle occurred, which 
 resulted in Gen. Butler’s taking possession of Kew Orleans, and 
 it became Mr. Coutrell’s turn to flee. Octave and his com¬ 
 panions, being duly advised by their friends, left the swamp, 
 made their way to Camp Parapet, then in command of Gen. 
 Phelps, and gave themselves up. Most of the men enlisted in 
 the army. 
 
 Incidents of the kind above mentioned were not infrequent. 
 The swamps were never free of negroes. They constituted a 
 species of asylum, and that fact had its effect upon the character 
 of the negro, and upon the working of the system. As a gen¬ 
 eral thing, the negro became more self-reliant, and the master 
 more wary, often adopting very inhuman measures of precau¬ 
 tion, such as branding with a hot iron, splitting or cropping the 
 ears, and compelling the suspected to wear the heavy iron collar 
 with horns, called “ a choker.” 
 
 Another fact that had an important influence upon the sys¬ 
 tem in the region under consideration, as well as on the charac¬ 
 ter of the slave, remains to be mentioned. The valley of the 
 Lower Mississippi, from an early period of its settlement, con¬ 
 tained a proportionately large free colored population. In 1803, 
 when the territory of which the State of Louisiana forms a part 
 was ceded by the French Republic to the L T nited States, these 
 free colored men were already quite numerous, and many of 
 them were possessed of considerable property. They were not 
 only as free as any other portion of the population, but in gen¬ 
 eral as well educated and intelligent. Many of them were the 
 children of the early white settlers, and had always enjoyed a 
 certain social as well as civil equality. As to the enjoyment of 
 political rights, under the old Spanish and French regimes, 
 neither white or black settlers ever had much experience; con¬ 
 sequently, there had never arisen among them much question of 
 these rights, or as to whom they belonged. The French Repub¬ 
 lic, founded upon “ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” had not yet 
 quite forgotten the import of these words, and hence caused to 
 to be inserted in the treaty of cession a solemn stipulation, in 
 the words following, to wit: 
 
 \ 
 
13 
 
 Art. 3d. “ The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be in¬ 
 corporated into the union of the United States, and admitted 
 as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal 
 Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and 
 immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean 
 time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoy¬ 
 ment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they 
 profess.” 
 
 Under this article of the treaty of 1803, the free colored peo¬ 
 ple of Louisiana have always held, and do now claim, that the 
 government of the United States was solemnly bound to secure 
 to them “ all the rights, advantages, and immunities ” that were 
 justly due to any other free inhabitants of the ceded territory, 
 whatever might be the political forms which it was subsequently 
 permitted to assume; and that, therefore, in authorizing the 
 wdiite inhabitants of the territory to organize it into slave States 
 under such constitutions and laws as excluded them from all 
 political and many civil rights and immunities, the government 
 of the United States permitted the perpetration of a great 
 wrong, not only against them, but against the good faith and 
 the honor of the whole people of the United States. 
 
 It is difficult to see how the case they present, even upon the 
 letter of the treaty, can be successfully traversed. And it is 
 still more difficult to understand how the fact of their having 
 lain under a great wrong for sixty years can now be set up as a 
 reason for refusing to rectify it. Besides, to day it cannot be 
 denied that the free colored people of Louisiana are, as a body, 
 as well educated, as intelligent, as orderly, and as industrious as 
 any other equal portion of the common population of the State; 
 on an average, as rich as the mass of the people of the Free 
 States,'"' and certainly far more loyal than their white fellow-citi- 
 
 * There is some difficulty in getting at the exact number of the free colored 
 population of Louisiana, or at the exact assessed value of the property on 
 which they paid taxes in any given year. According to the United States 
 census of 18G0 3 the free colored population of the State was at that period 
 18,647, and, from the best information I could obtain at New Orleans, the as- 
 
14 
 
 zens, as was proved in tlie summer of last year, when Governor 
 Shepley made a call for volunteers to defend the city of h\ew 
 Orleans against a threatened attack of the rebel army under 
 Magruder; while the white inhabitants, even many of those that 
 had been in the employ of the Government, held back and re¬ 
 fused to be enrolled, in forty-eight hours after the call addressed 
 to the free colored people was issued, more than one hundred of 
 their shops and places of business were closed and a full regi¬ 
 ment was organized and ready for the field, and within seventy- 
 two hours a second. Are not these people, then, as fit in all re¬ 
 spects to enjoy and exercise the rights civil and political of citi¬ 
 zenship, as they whose only qualification is a shade whiter skin, 
 and a reluctant swearing to an oath of allegiance under protest, 
 or with mental reservation ? 
 
 The truth is that the case of these old freemen of Louisiana is 
 a sui generis ,” and does by no means involve the question con¬ 
 nected with the justice or expediency of granting political rights 
 to the recently emancipated colored people. Their claim to 
 
 sessed value of the property on which they paid taxes for that year was about 
 $13,000,000. This gives an average of about $700 for each person. 
 
 But the population, as given in the census for I860, is believed to be con¬ 
 siderably below the true estimate. The best informed persons, old residents 
 of New Orleans, and familiar with the subject, putting it at not less than 
 25,000 at the present time. If we assume the assessed value of their property 
 to be now what it was in 1800, it makes an average for each person of $520. 
 
 It is true that, according to the State census of 1853, as stated in the Loui¬ 
 siana State Register, the free colored population in that year was 28,820. But 
 this is believed not to be accurate, inasmuch as, according to the same State 
 Register, the population for the year 1850 was but 17,4G2. 
 
 These discrepancies arise in a great measure, undoubtedly, from the diffi¬ 
 culty of distinguishing between the lightest shade of the colored population 
 and the darkest shade of the white, and the consequent latitude of classifica¬ 
 tion, according to the caprice of the persons making the census. It is believed, 
 however, that the estimate of from 23,000 to 25,000 for the population, and 
 from 13,000,000 to 15,000,000 as the assessed value of the property upon 
 which they have paid taxes, approximates the truth. 
 
 In the loyal free States, according to the Lrnited States census for 1860, the 
 estimate is as follows, viz: 
 
 Population, 19,239,851; valuation of real and personal property, $9,325,- 
 945,381; giving $484 to each person.—Nee Nat. Almanac , pp. 147 and 309. 
 
15 
 
 the enjoyment of these rights rests upon entirely distinct and 
 very different grounds. Besides, the Government needs the 
 suffrages of these people in defence of the Constitution and the 
 Union at this very hour, almost as indispensably as it needed 
 their arms at the period above referred to. 
 
 But, however this may be, it is not difficult to understand how 
 so numerous and intelligent a body of people, living and thriv¬ 
 ing in the midst of slavery in spite of all obstructions, of the 
 same race as the enslaved, should have had an important influ¬ 
 ence as well upon the master as upon the slave, inducing the 
 latter to greater and greater longing for liberty, and for the 
 opportunity to live and labor, free from the scourge of the driver’s 
 whip ; and the former to more and more wariness and severity 
 of repression. 
 
 There were other peculiar circumstances connected with the 
 working of the slave system in the Talley of the Lower Missis¬ 
 sippi, to which I need not now refer. The facts here mentioned 
 are sufficient to show that, in its main features, slavery was 
 here of the same general nature as elsewhere. Its results and 
 human products, are what we have principally to deal with, and 
 these also are everywhere nearly identical. Thoroughly to com¬ 
 prehend these, and to know how to dispose of them, is the great 
 necessity that presses upon our statesmen and rulers in the 
 present hour. 
 
 As I have before said, here, upon the banks of the great 
 river, these results and products are still to be seen, side by 
 side, the colored man, as slavery has left him, and the white 
 man, as slavery has made him. 
 
 Allow me briefly to present them, not in the light of my own 
 personal observation alone, but rather in that of the experience 
 of those whose duty it has been to mingle with them, and to 
 deal practically with many of the troublesome and disturbing 
 questions arising out of the great transformation going on in 
 their midst. 
 
 And, first, as to the colored man. Gen. Banks, in command 
 of the Department of the Gulf, whose experience and earnest 
 study of the subject matter under consideration, gives weight to 
 his testimony, declared to me that he had learned far more of 
 the colored men than of the white; that they understood much 
 
16 
 
 better the requirements of their own peculiar position in the 
 present exigency than the white men did of theirs, and accepted 
 them much more readily and wisely; and that, in his judgment, 
 “ whoever else might fail in the great revolution, it would not 
 be the black man.” 
 
 And, in a letter from Alexandria, Louisiana, in answer to 
 certain inquiries addressed to him, previous to my departure 
 from New Orleans, under date of March 28th, 1864, Gen. Banks 
 writes: 
 
 “ I entertain no doubt whatever of the capabilities of the 
 emancipated colored people to meet and discharge the duties 
 incident to the great change in their condition. I have seen 
 them in all situations, within the last year and a half, and 
 it is with much pleasure I say, as I stated to you in person, 
 that they seem to me to have a clearer comprehension of their po¬ 
 sition, and the duties which rest upon them, than any other class 
 of our people, accepting the necessity of labor which rests upon 
 them as upon others. The conditions they uniformly impose 
 show' the good sense with which they approach the change in 
 their condition. 
 
 u They demand, in the first instance, that to whatever punish¬ 
 ment they may be subjected, they shall not be flogged. 
 
 u 2d. That they shall labor only when they are well treated. 
 
 “ 3d. That families should not be separated. 
 
 “4th. That their children shall be educated. 
 
 66 With these stipulations I have never found any person of that 
 race who did not readily accept the necessity of continuous and 
 faithful labor at just rates of compensation, which they seem 
 willing to leave to the Government. As far as the experiment 
 goes in this department, they have justified in the fullest degree 
 this conclusion, and, subject to the conditions wdiich they im¬ 
 pose, they are willing to and have rendered faithful labor. 
 
 “ There were in this department, when I assumed command, 
 many thousands of colored persons vfithout employment or 
 home, wTio were decimated by disease and death of the most 
 frightful character. To these, natives of the plantations in the 
 department, have been added many thousand fugitives from the 
 surrounding States, of every age and condition. There are not, 
 
17 
 
 at this time, 500 persons that are not self-supporting, ancl there 
 has not been in the last year, any day when we would not have 
 gladly accepted ten or twenty thousand, irrespective of their 
 condition, in addition to those we have of our own. Except that 
 the negro understood the necessities of his position, and was 
 able, in the language of your letter, “ to meet and discharge the 
 duties incident to the great change in his condition,” this result 
 would have been physically impossible. 
 
 “ Wherever, in the department, they have been well treated, 
 and reasonably compensated, they have invariably rendered 
 faithful service to their employers. 
 
 “ From many persons who manage plantations, I have received 
 the information that there is no difficulty whatever in keeping 
 them at work, if the conditions to which I have above referred 
 are complied with.” 
 
 And George II. Ilanks, Colonel of the 15th Regiment, Corps 
 d’Afrique, member of the Board of Enrollment, and Superin¬ 
 tendent of negro labor in the Department of the Gulf, under 
 date of February Cth, 1861, deposes : “ that he went to Louisi¬ 
 ana as a Lieutenant in the 12th Connecticut Regiment, under 
 Gen. Butler; that he was appointed superintendent of contra¬ 
 bands under Brig. Gen. T. W. Sherman. The negroes, he says, 
 “ came in scarred, wounded, and some with iron collars round 
 their necks. I set them at work on abandoned plantations, and 
 on the fortifications. At one time we had G,500 of them ; there 
 was not the slightest difficulty with them. They are more will¬ 
 ing to work, and more patient than any set of human beings I 
 ever saw. It is true there is a general dislike to return to their 
 old masters ; and those who have remained at home are suspi¬ 
 cious of foul play, and feel it to be necessary to run away to test 
 their freedom. This year the dislike has very much lessened ; 
 they boffin to feel themselves more secure, and do not hesitate 
 to return for wages. The negroes willingly accept the condition 
 of labor for their own maintenance, and the musket for their 
 freedom . I knew a family of five, who were freed by the volun¬ 
 tary enlistment of one of the boys. lie entered the ranks for 
 the avowed purpose of freeing his family. Ilis name was 
 Moore; he was owned by the Messrs. Leeds, iron-founders ; they 
 
18 
 
 resided within one of the Parishes excepted in the Proclamation 
 of Emancipation. He was the first man to fall at Pascagoula. 
 Upon starting, he said to his family : 44 I know I shall fall, but 
 you will be free.” 
 
 “A negro soldier demanded his children at my hands. I 
 wanted to test his affection. I said : 4 they had a good home.’ 
 lie said: 4 Lieut., I want to send my children to school; my 
 wife is not allowed to see them; I am in your service; I wear 
 military clothes; I have been in three battles; I was in the 
 assault at Port Hudson; I want my children; they are my flesh 
 and blood.’ ” 
 
 Col. Hanks, whose true-hearted and faithful service to the 
 colored people in the Department of the Gulf, cannot be too 
 highly appreciated, did not, of course, undertake to withstand 
 that appeal. The children were delivered to the father. 
 
 Hext to the right to work for his own maintenance and that 
 of his family, the colored man here, as elsewhere, asks for the 
 privilege of sending his children to school. 
 
 44 The colored people,” says Col. Hanks, 44 manifest the great¬ 
 est anxiety to educate their children, and they thoroughly ap¬ 
 preciate the benefits of education. I have known a family to go 
 with two meals a day, in order to save fifty cents a week to pay 
 an indifferent teacher for their children.” 
 
 The universal and urgent desire of the colored people for edu¬ 
 cation was most strikingly illustrated by a fact that came to my 
 knowledge during a recent visit to Port Hudson. In each of 
 the camps of the colored regiments, the best built cabin was a 
 school-house. These regiments had obtained the authorization 
 of Gen. Andrews for the establishment of regimental schools. 
 They proceeded with their own hands to erect school-houses, and, 
 at their own cost, to procure teachers (in some of the regiments 
 the chaplains undertook that duty); and, according to the testi¬ 
 mony of their officers, all their leisure time was most assiduously 
 and perseveringly devoted to their studies. Ought not the Gov¬ 
 ernment to encourage this most praiseworthy desire of the colored 
 regiments, by providing for each, at least one permanent teacher \ 
 A disabled veteran white soldier, might be thus employed. 
 
 A desire for education, a love of knowledge in any community 
 
19 
 
 or people have been always considered the surest proofs of their 
 intrinsic worth, the most hopeful signs of their capacity for 
 civilization and future advancement. The extraordinary mani¬ 
 festation of this love and desire among the emancipated colored 
 people, vhen taken in connection with their previous condition 
 of degradation, is one of the most amazing facts with respect to 
 them. And when contrasted with the almost universal indiffer¬ 
 ence, even contempt, with which the poor Southern whites re¬ 
 gard that matter, is well calculated to stagger the white man’s 
 boast of the great superiority of his race. The colored man 
 came out of Africa without a single element of civilization. 
 Not even a tradition of any trace of education belongs to his an¬ 
 cestry. On the other hand, what are called “ the poor white 
 trash ” of the Slave States, are for the most part, the descendants 
 of the same race as the men who have carried our civilization 
 from the hills of New England through the great wilderness, to 
 the shores of the Pacific Ocean. They set out upon their career 
 with many advantages of climate and soil, and with equal op¬ 
 portunities for education and enlightenment. But there stood 
 in their way the formidable barriers of the mastership. Its all 
 devouring darkness swallowed them up, and to-day it can only 
 be said of them, that no more ignorant, demoralized, and pitiable 
 community of human beings ever lived in any civilized country, 
 in any age. 
 
 It may therefore be questioned, whether after all, the most 
 pernicious and fatal work of the masters has not been wrought 
 against their own race, even leaving out of the account their 
 present attempt to overthrow the grandest results of its history— 
 the nationality, civilization, and free institutions of the People 
 of the United States. 
 
 “ Besides their hearty appreciation of education, the colored 
 people,” says Col. Hanks, “ are very religious and devotional, 
 and through this channel are easily controlled and taught. I 
 have had frequent exhibitions of their trust in God relative to 
 their freedom. I have known them to pray to God to bless the 
 d—d Yankees.” 
 
 “ The negroes,” says Mr. Koudanez, “ are much more virtuous 
 since the Proclamation of Freedom. The men respect them¬ 
 selves much more, and the women are much more chaste, because 
 
20 
 
 an honest livelihood is open to them. Cohabitation was often 
 prompted by their wants, such as clothing and other necessaries.” 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to speak of the character of 
 the colored man as a soldier, as presented here in the Valley of 
 the Mississippi. The universal official attestation to his soldierly 
 bearing and true valor under the severest trials, has put that 
 beyond question. Xor are his sobriety, orderliness, and willing 
 submission to discipline, less conspicuous. Gen. Andrews, in 
 command at Port Hudson, recently assured me that his colored 
 troops were his best troops, that they performed all their duties, 
 and especially fatigue duties, with greater cheerfulness and more 
 faithfully than the white regiments; and that, with competent 
 officers, he believed no troops would be more reliable. 
 
 Even the single instance of apparent insubordination which 
 occurred recently at Fort Jackson, was provoked by such un¬ 
 heard-of outrages on the part of the Lieut.-Col., and the other 
 white officers implicated, that Gen. Dwight, who was sent there 
 by General Banks to investigate the matter, personally declared 
 to me, that the colored soldiers were blameless. The officers 
 were dismissed from the service—a very light punishment, con¬ 
 sidering the enormity of their offences. 
 
 O «y 
 
 This affair was published in many public journals in the 
 United States and abroad as a case of mutiny. It had really 
 nothing of the animus of a mutiny. AY hat the men proposed to 
 do was to take with them their shameless and guilty officers, 
 march to Xew Orleans and deliver themselves up to Gen. Banks 
 as the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 AYe need not then despair of the emancipated negro. Xot- 
 withstanding the degradation imposed upon him by the slave 
 system, there is much left in him to build upon. He is at least 
 ready and willing to undertake the performance of his humble 
 and toilsome part in the new order of things. Indeed, if one 
 may take as a proof, the results of the life-struggle and history 
 of the old free colored people of Louisiana, before referred to, the 
 conclusion is unavoidable, that the black man is not only capable 
 of self-guidance and self-maintenance, but, that under the influ¬ 
 ence of higher and nobler human motives and incentives, his 
 progress in the arts and attainments of civilized life, is subject 
 only to the same laws that control that of other races of men. 
 
21 
 
 On tlie other hand, what is to be said of the white man, his 
 old master, and of his capacity, disposition, and attitude relative 
 to the part which he is called upon to perform in the new indus¬ 
 trial and social system ? 
 
 Col. Hanks, a large portion of whose daily life, for two years 
 past, has been spent in daily intercourse with the planters in the 
 Department of the Gulf, declares that “ although they begin to 
 see that Slavery is dead, yet the spirit of Slavery still lives 
 among them. Many of them are even more rampant to enslave 
 the negro than ever before. They make great endeavors to re¬ 
 cover what they call their oxen negroes. One planter offered me 
 §5,000 to return his negroes. They have even hired men to steal 
 them from my own camp. (The old spirit still prompting to the 
 old crime, which, long ago, was declared felony by the law of 
 nations if perpetrated in Africa.) ” “ They yield,” he continues, 
 
 “ to the idea of freedom only under compulsion. They submit 
 to the terms dictated by the Government, because obliged so to 
 do. Mr. "V. B. Marmillon, one of the richest and most exten¬ 
 sive sugar planters in the whole valley of the Mississippi, took 
 the oath of allegiance, but refused to work his plantation unless 
 he could have his own negroes returned to him. lie had 1,450 
 acres of cane under cultivation; his whole family of plantation 
 hands left him and came to Hew Orleans, reporting themselves 
 to me. Among them could be found every species of mechanic 
 and artisan. I called them up and informed them that the Gov¬ 
 ernment had taken possession of old master’s crop, and that they 
 were needed to take it off, and would be paid for their labor. 
 All consented to return ; but next morning when the time came 
 for their departure, not one would go. One of them said : “ I 
 will go anywhere else to work, but you may shoot me before I 
 will return to the old plantation.” I afterwards ascertained that 
 Marmillon, whom they called ‘ Old Cotton Beard,’ had boasted 
 in the presence of two colored girls, house servants, how he 
 would serve them when he once more had them in his power. 
 These girls had walked more than thirty miles in the night to 
 bring the information to their friends.” These people were set to 
 work elsewhere. 
 
 “ It is undoubtedly true,” says Col. Hanks, “ that this year a 
 change for the better seems to be taking place. In some parishes 
 
22 
 
 the letting of plantations to Northern men has a powerful effect. 
 The disposition of the planters, however, towards their old 
 slaves, when they consent to hire them, is by no means friendly. 
 I told a planter recently, that it was the express order of Gen. 
 Banks that the negroes should be educated. He replied that, 
 ( no one should teach his negroes .’ ” 
 
 Col. Hanks further declares it as his deliberate judgment that 
 u if civil government be established here, and military rule 
 withdrawn, there is the greatest danger that the negro would 
 become subject to some form of serfdom.” 
 
 His testimony on this point is referred to elsewhere. 
 
 The statement of Col. Hanks, and the general correctness of 
 his views, were concurred in by many other intelligent persons, 
 familiar with the subject, and my own personal observation fully 
 confirms them. In a stretch of three hundred miles up and 
 down the Mississippi, but one creole planter was found (there 
 may, of course, have been others with whom I did not come in 
 contact,) who heartily and unreservedly adopted the idea of free 
 labor, and honestly carried it out upon his plantation. And 
 although he declared that, in itself it was successful much beyond 
 his expectation, “ yet,” he said, “ my life and that of my family 
 are rendered very unhappy by the opposition and contumely of 
 my neighbors.” 
 
 The simple truth is, that the virus of slavery, the lust of own¬ 
 ership, in the hearts of these old masters, is as virulent and 
 active to-dav as it ever was. Many of them admit that the old 
 form of slavery is for the present, broken up. They do not 
 hesitate even to express the opinion that the experiment of se¬ 
 cession is a failure; but they scoff at the idea of freedom for the 
 negro, and repeat the old argument of his incapacity to take 
 care of himself, or to entertain any higher motive for exertion 
 than that of the whip. They await with impatience the with¬ 
 drawal of the military authorities, and the re-establishment of 
 the civil power of the State to be controlled and used as hitherto 
 for the maintenance of what, to them doubtless, appears the 
 paramount object of all civil authority, of the State itself, some 
 form of the slave system. 
 
 With slight modifications, the language recently used by 
 Judge Humphrey in a speech delivered at a Union meeting at 
 
23 
 
 Huntsville, Alabama, seems most aptly to express the hopes and 
 purposes of a large proportion of the old masters in the Valley 
 of the Mississippi, who have consented to qualify their loyalty 
 to the Union by taking the oath prescribed by the President’s 
 Proclamation of Amnesty. After advising that Alabama should 
 at once return to the Union by simply rescinding the ordinance 
 of secession , and after expressing the opinion that the old in¬ 
 stitution of slavery was gone, Judge Humphrey says: “ I 
 believe, in case of a return to the Union, we would receive 
 political co-operation , so as to secure the management of that 
 labor by those who were slaves. There is really no difference , 
 in my opinion , whether ice hold them as absolute slaves , or 
 obtain their labor by some other method. Of course we prefer 
 the old method. But that question is not now before us.” 
 
 It is true that Gen. Banks entertains slightly different 
 views of the disposition and purposes of the planters, predi¬ 
 cated, however, on the belief that the Government will adopt 
 some system of “ sufficient supervision to compel the negro 
 to labor,” although, as we have seen he elsewhere declares that 
 good treatment and fair wages have in all cases been found 
 compulsion enough. What the old masters understand by 
 “ a supervision to compel the negroes to labor,” is not difficult 
 to imagine; certainly it is not good treatment and fair wages. 
 
 In the letter before referred to, Gen. Banks says: “I have 
 no doubt that many of the planters within our lines, who are 
 protected by the Government in the enjoyment of their prop¬ 
 erty, honestly accept the new situation, and enter into the 
 idea of free labor with sincerity; but it is coupled with an incre¬ 
 dulity as to the success of the experiment, natural to their situa¬ 
 tion, and to the ideas in which they have been educated. This 
 is fostered more by the intractability and brutality of the over¬ 
 seers—the middle class between the laborer and the employer— 
 than it is by any innate disposition of the planter himself, and 
 their disbelief of any sufficient governmental supervision to com¬ 
 pel the negro to labor , to which they think he is disinclined. If 
 such governmental supervision fail in this regard, the experiment 
 itself will fail.” 
 
 For a more full expression of the opinions of Gen. Banks on 
 
24 
 
 this subject, reference may be had to a copy of his letter here¬ 
 with submitted. 
 
 The opinions hereinbefore expressed as to the spirit and dis¬ 
 position of the old masters, is fully and explicitly sustained by 
 the testimony of Brig.-Gen. James S. Wadsworth, than whom no 
 man has had better opportunities for an intelligent judgment. 
 
 In his examination before the Commission, soon after his re¬ 
 turn from an olhcial tour through the Valley of the Mississippi, 
 in the early part of the past winter, in speaking of the state of 
 things in Louisiana, Gen. Wadsworth said : 
 
 44 There is one thing that must be taken into account, and that 
 is, that there will exist a very strong disposition among the mas¬ 
 ters to control these people, and keep them as a subordinate and 
 subjected class. Undoubtedly they intend to do that. I think 
 the tendency to establish a system of serfdom is the great danger 
 to be guarded against. I talked with a planter in the La 
 Fourche district near Tibadouville ; he said he was not in favor 
 of secession ; he avowed his hope and expectation that slavery 
 would be restored there in some form. I said: 4 If we went 
 away and left these people now, do you suppose you could re¬ 
 duce them again to slavery V lie laughed to scorn the idea that 
 they could not. 4 What,’ said I, 4 these men, who have had arms 
 in their hands V 4 Yes,’ he said, 4 we should take the arms away 
 from them, of course.’ ” 
 
 Much other testimony of like import might be adduced, but 
 it is believed not necessary to a clear understanding of the pres¬ 
 ent attitude and position of the two principal constituent ele¬ 
 ments of the disrupted slave society, in the region under consid¬ 
 eration* 
 
 For the sake of greater perspicuity, I have hitherto refrained 
 from any reference to the treatment and actual condition of the 
 emancipated population, or to the labor system recently intro¬ 
 duced in the Department of the Gulf. In what I deem it my 
 duty to say of the former, I refer for the most part to a period 
 antecedent to the date of the proclamation of Gen. Banks pre¬ 
 scribing the latter; that proclamation having been issued but a 
 few’ days previous to my arrival at Yew Orleans. 
 
 Col. Hanks speaks of the patience of these people. Certainly, 
 their uncomplaining endurance under the severest privation and 
 
25 
 
 suffering, is one of tlie most remarkable characteristics of their 
 race everywhere. Their previous life of slavery inured them to 
 daily, habitual suffering, and up to this hour, their initiation 
 into Freedom has been attended with little else than danger, ill 
 usage, deprivation, sickness, and bereavement. The mortality 
 among them in the Valley of the Mississippi has been frightful. 
 The most competent judges compute it at not less than 25 per 
 cent, in the last two years. With few exceptions, they have 
 everywhere come under the control of incompetent and other¬ 
 wise unfit officials. Often here, as elsewhere, they have fallen 
 a prey to the avaricious and unscrupulous. In many instances, 
 clothed in rags, without wholesome or sufficient food, lodged at 
 night without beds or bedding, they have toiled for months, and 
 in the end have been turned off with little or no compensation. 
 The great exposures to which they have been subjected, gave 
 rise to severe and fatal diseases anionsst them, in which they 
 were left, in many cases, without proper care or medical attend¬ 
 ance. Great mortality was a natural consequence. Much de¬ 
 privation and suffering were, under the most favorable circum¬ 
 stances, inevitable to the exigencies in which they were placed 
 by the war. But I should fail in my duty if I neglected to de¬ 
 clare, that in my judgment, many of the injuries of which they 
 have been the victims, and a great deal of their suffering, have 
 resulted from the failure of the national authorities to provide a 
 proper and uniform system for their care and protection. 
 
 In departments where, as here in the Department of the Gulf, 
 there is good reason to believe that the chief military authorities 
 have had at heart their best interests, occupied as they have been 
 with the movements of great armies and by the absorbing cares 
 of the military government devolved upon them, it was inevit¬ 
 able that they should often fall into the hands of incompetent 
 and unfaithful subalterns ; even under the system recently put 
 into operation here, and which in many respects is certainly 
 better than the lack of system previously existing, they come di¬ 
 rectly under the control and government of the assistant provost 
 marshals,* to each of whom is assigned a certain district of the 
 
 * “ All questions,” says the order of Gen. Banks, “between the employer and (he 
 employed, until other tribunals are established, will be decided by the provost 
 
 marshals of the parishes.” 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 planting region. These assistant provost marshals are usually 
 young subalterns, army officers, captains or lieutenants. They 
 are received into the houses of the planters and treated with a 
 certain consideration. It is hardly to be expected that they 
 should resist the influences that are brought to bear upon them, 
 or that often, without being fully conscious of it, they should 
 not become the employer's instrument of great injustice and ill 
 treatment towards his colored laborers. 
 
 An upright and competent witness whose testimony is here¬ 
 with submitted, says: “ I am free to declare that the provost 
 marshals have not done justice to the laborers on the plantations. 
 They do not see that Gen. Banks’ orders are carried out. On 
 many plantations whipping is still permitted.” More than one 
 instance of great neglect, injustice and abuse have come to the 
 knowledge of the Commission. 
 
 O 
 
 The plan of Gen. Banks has been in operation too short a 
 time to judge fully of its merits. But, as I have just said, it is 
 believed on the whole and as a temporary arrangement, superior 
 to any hitherto adopted in that department. As a permanent 
 system it contains great defects. In the first place it leaves the 
 classification of the laborers to be determined between the employ¬ 
 ers and the assistant provost marshals, which is practically leav¬ 
 ing it to the employers themselves. Then, secondly, without 
 reference to the capacities or wishes of the employed, or to the 
 competition of the labor market, it determines beforehand the 
 wages of their labor. 
 
 In the third place, it implies that the clothing and subsistence 
 of the laborer and his family, should be left to the employers’ 
 sense of what is needful for them, with liberty to be sure, for 
 the employed to commute for clothing at the rate of three dol¬ 
 lars a month for first class hands, and in similar proportion for 
 other classes. 
 
 If the only object to be accomplished was simply “ to compel 
 the negro to labor” in a condition of perpetual subordination 
 and subjection, this arrangement would be appropriate enough. 
 But if the object be to make the colored man a self-supporting 
 and self-defending member of the community, then he must be 
 placed in a position where he can determine the value of his 
 
27 
 
 own labor, and be left to take the responsibilities of his own ex¬ 
 istence and w r ell being, as well as that of his family. 
 
 As a general proposition this is too plain, and in itself too 
 cogent to require argument. In the actual condition of things 
 in the Department of the Gulf, it might not be convenient or 
 even possible to give it full effect at the present moment; but 
 the temporary adoption of an opposite principle, should not be 
 allowed to become the basis of a permanent system, which would 
 differ very little in its practical working from that of slavery 
 itself. 
 
 In regard to classification, clothing, and the rate of wages, the 
 plan of Mr. Win. P. Mellen, Agent of the Treasury Department 
 at Natchez, appears to me a much nearer approach to right 
 principles and justice, as between employer and employed. In 
 this plan the classification is determined beforehand, and the 
 employed are allowed to clothe themselves. The rate of wages 
 is here also fixed by authority, which, as before suggested, is 
 only to be justified by the necessity of protecting the laborer 
 under the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed by the 
 war; but here the rate is much nearer to the standard of the 
 public market. 
 
 According to Mr. Mellen’s plan, all sound persons between 
 the ages of 20 and 40 are No. 1 hands. Between 15 and 19 and 
 between 40 and 50 years, No. 2 hands. Between 12 and 14 and 
 over 50, No. 3 hands. 
 
 The wages for males, No. 1 hands, are $25 per month; No. 2, 
 $20, and No. 3, $15. For females the wages are for the several 
 grades respectively, $18, $14, and $10. 
 
 Persons suffering from any physical defect or infirmity con¬ 
 stitute a fourth class, and are paid accordingly. In Mr. Mellen’s 
 system the employers are obliged to keep on hand a sufficient 
 supply of proper clothing, and to sell the same to the employed 
 at wholesale cost price and ten per cent, advance. 
 
 The rate of wages of the several grades of laborers, as fixed in 
 the Department of the Gulf, is eight, six, five, and three dollars 
 a month, with clothing, or three dollars per month commutation 
 for clothing. In this Department also, the laborer having once 
 selected his employer is compelled to remain with him for a year. 
 While under any system that may be adopted it is doubtless 
 
28 
 
 of the greatest importance that the colored laborer should be 
 made to understand the nature and obligations of a contract, and 
 should be held to the just fulfillment of such as lie may volun¬ 
 tarily enter into, this form of enforcing the obligation is 
 deemed wrong in principle and liable to serious abuses, and 
 only to be tolerated as a temporary necessity. 
 
 The system of Gen. Banks provides also tor the education of 
 the colored children on the plantations, and for the establish¬ 
 ment of free labor savings institutions, both of which meet the 
 entire approval of the Commission. 
 
 I do not deem it necessary here to enter farther into the de- 
 tails of these several systems. The proclamation and the orders 
 under which they are established, are undoubtedly of record in 
 the War and Treasury departments. Nor do I desire to criticise 
 too closely plans adopted, doubtless with the best intentions, to 
 meet the urgent necessities which presented themselves in the 
 confusion and chaos consequent upon the breaking up of the old 
 systems, in the midst of a great war. Neither, however, seems 
 to me sufficiently to recognize the freedman's right to intervene 
 in his own affairs, or to contemplate sufficiently the great end 
 of educating him to self control, self reliance, and to the exercise 
 of the rights and duties of civilized life. 
 
 This must, of course, be a work of time. But unless a system 
 be speedily adopted which shall embrace these as its fundamen¬ 
 tal and primary objects, the practical freedom and future well¬ 
 being of the emancipated population, no less than the great in 
 dustrial interests dependent upon their voluntary, enlightened, 
 and justly compensated labor, will be seriously, if not fatally 
 jeopardied. 
 
 But, in the judgment of the Commission, the most serious 
 error in connection with the present arrangements for the care 
 and protection of these people arises out of the assignment to a 
 different agency of the care and disposal of the abandoned 
 plantations. To enter into the detail of all the evils and abuses 
 that have arisen out of this error, and which are unavoidable, so 
 long as it continues to exist, would occupy too great a space in 
 this report. Suffice it to say that it is the source of the greatest 
 confusion and a perpetual collision between the different local 
 authorities, in which not only the emancipated population but 
 
29 
 
 the Government itself, suffers the most serious injuries and 
 losses. 
 
 Gen. Banks, in the letter hereinbefore so often quoted, says : 
 “ The assignment of the abandoned or forfeited plantations to 
 one department of the Government, aud the protection and sup- 
 port of the emancipated people to another, is a fundamental 
 error productive of incalculable evils, and cannot be too soon or 
 too thoroughly corrected.” 
 
 And this is the purport of all the testimony which the Com¬ 
 mission has been able to obtain, not in the Department of the 
 Gulf only, but everywhere, in relation to this matter. 
 
 The unhesitating judgment of every person, official or other, 
 not interested in the opportunities it affords for peculation, 
 with whom we have consulted, coincides with that of Gen. 
 Banks. All, without exception, declare that no system can 
 avail to effect the great objects contemplated, that does not as¬ 
 sign to one and the same authority, the care and disposal of the 
 abandoned plantations, and the care and protection of the eman¬ 
 cipated laborers who are to cultivate them. 
 
 And, after the most thorough investigations, I am authorized 
 in saying that this is the deliberate judgment of the Com mis 
 sion. 
 
 If, in the preceding cursory survey of the present state of 
 things in the valley of the Mississippi, I have succeeded in pre¬ 
 senting the two constituent elements of the old slave societv in 
 their true light, it cannot fail to suggest the intrinsic nature of 
 the antagonisms that stand in the way of the successful intro¬ 
 duction of the free labor system there, and of the political recon¬ 
 struction based upon it. Fvery analysis of slave society every¬ 
 where brings us to a like conclusion. The difficulty is not with 
 the emancipated slave; but with the old master, still enthralled 
 by his old infatuation. 
 
 I am aware that this master class has been hitherto generally 
 represented as a body of men remarkable for their proficiency in 
 statesmanship, politics, and deportment. It is hardly necessary 
 now to controvert this view of them, any further than to say, 
 that there is another quite as intrinsic and much more impor¬ 
 tant to be well understood. 
 
 Aunt Phillis, the old slave cook of the highly respectable and 
 
30 
 
 thrifty St. Helena cotton planter, Mr. John Pope, in the midst 
 of the story of her long experience of the cruelties and sufferings 
 of plantation life, upon the very ground where she then stood 
 free at last, stopped, as if some new light had burst upon her 
 weary and bewildered soul, and looking up said : “ Trute is, 
 Massa, Massa Pope touglit God was dead.” That was her ac¬ 
 count of them, her explanation of the phenomena she had been 
 witness to in the secret recesses of that social order of which they 
 were the founders and chiefs. And by no means a very irra¬ 
 tional one, for certainly, to men who had come to ignore so 
 utterly, the existence of God’s image under the black skin, so 
 often lacerated by the blows of their many thonged whip of 
 dried bull’s hide, such a thought was not at all unlikely. 
 
 However this may be, wliat is certain is that these masters, 
 isolating themselves, in their fierce pride, from the great move¬ 
 ments of the free, democratic society and civilization of their 
 country and age, had come to entertain some very strange and 
 erroneous beliefs, as well with regard to themselves as with re¬ 
 gard to the world around them. With their hearts filled with 
 the indisputable ownership of broad domains and toiling slaves, 
 is it strange that the fumes of unrestrained and illicit power and 
 dominion, should have mounted into their heads and perverted, 
 not their own self-consciousness only, but their whole sense of 
 truth and of the quality of actions and of things, even to the ex¬ 
 tent of believing their monstrous system of organized barbarism, 
 the supremest and most excellent product of the ages, and its 
 maintenance the one paramount concern of the world? What 
 to them was the value of constitution, government, or country, 
 compared with the interests of their God-ordained slave com¬ 
 monwealth and mastership ? 
 
 Seldom has the ethical providence of the world had to deal 
 with so profound a blindness and degeneration. It is only to be 
 paralleled by that of an order of men whose regime was extin¬ 
 guished in its own blood at the end of the last century in France. 
 Apparently that ancient “ noblesse ” was as besotted with pride 
 and disdain as even this new order of the slave-whip. They 
 seem to have entertained as supreme a contempt for the poor, 
 white-skinned drudges, upon whose spoilated labor they had 
 lived and prospered and revelled for a thousand years, as any 
 
31 
 
 master for his black-skinned chattels. It is related that one of 
 them, a certain Count de Cliarolais, whom Dulaure calls the 
 finest specimen of a feudal lord of his time, used sometimes to 
 amuse his leisure by shooting at the tilers on the roofs of the 
 neighboring houses; and when one of them rolled down, 
 wounded or dead, it was an occasion of great merriment to him 
 and his companions. Doubtless, that to him was as enjoyable a 
 feat, as the blows of the coach-trace whip upon the bare back of 
 a prostrate, pregnant woman to that South Carolina master, 
 Fararby, whose exploit is mentioned in the main Report of the 
 Commission. 
 
 And yet it would seem that even these people had not got to 
 quite the depth of Aunt Phillis’s master. They did not “ believe 
 that God was dead.’ 1 The faith they had come to entertain and 
 
 t j 
 
 profess was only that, so confidently announced by a lady of the 
 Court of Louis 15tli. Speaking of some de Cliarolais who had 
 just been called to his final account, she said, “Depend upon it, 
 sir, God will think twice before damning a man of that quality.” 
 It took the Reign of Terror and the Guillotine to cure that 
 ancient noblesse of their delusions. 
 
 The culmination of the masters’ infatuation in their present 
 atrocious war would seem to indicate a somewhat similar kind 
 of Providential surgery, to have been necessary for them. 
 
 However this may be, had not their infatuation and blindness 
 infected and demoralized the mind and heart of the whole people 
 of the LTiited States and of their public servants, the intrinsic 
 nature of their mastership, and the utter incompatibility of its 
 existence, with that of our free democratic institutions and 
 civilization, would long ago have been recognized and acted 
 upon frankly, and without equivocations or reservations. 
 
 Every diagnosis of the malady under which the body politic 
 is writhing and staggering in the present hour, discloses its 
 nucleus in the old mastership. That in this mastership is the 
 seat of the disease, containing the pestiferous virus by which the 
 whole nation has been infected* That this seed of national dis¬ 
 honor, dissolution, and death, was brought from Africa, and 
 landed upon the banks of the James River, Virginia, in the 
 autumn of that same year (1020) in which the Pilgrims, with 
 the germs of our national life, civilization, and glory, landed 
 
32 
 
 upon Plymouth Pock. That this fatal virus has spread and in¬ 
 creased in virulence for more than two hundred years, until the 
 glow of the fever had come to he mistaken for the bloom of 
 health ; until the summits of the mountainous social carbuncle 
 generated by it, had come to be regarded as the heights of 
 national culture, wealth, and glory. Let us thank God that it 
 has burst at last, and opened up to the eyes of all men its 
 loathsome depths, so that the merest tyro in the science of 
 social and political health and statesmanship, need no longer be 
 mistaken as to its nature, or as to the treatment proper for its 
 cure. 
 
 Let us indeed thank God, that under the operation of his own 
 infinitely just and inexorable laws, the white man’s great enter¬ 
 prise of nearly four hundred years’ duration, to rob the negro 
 race of its labor and enrich himself with it, approaches its final 
 termination. 
 
 A more stupendous scheme of human selfishness and wrong 
 was never projected or prosecuted on earth. Taking it from its 
 beginnings, in the slave-hunts in Africa, in which it is said two 
 human beings, on an average, were destroyed for every one 
 taken—through the nameless atrocities of the middle passage, in 
 the course of which it is estimated that more than two millions 
 of human bodies, dead and alive, were cast into the sea, to its 
 final consummation on this continent, in a gigantic system of 
 organized inhumanity and barbarism, it involved the commission 
 of every crime known to civilized nations. 
 
 It could not be otherwise; the very nature of the enterprise 
 made the commission of all crimes a necessary incident, to its 
 successful prosecution. Viewed then, simply, in the light of its 
 own legitimate operations, the slave system may well be defined 
 “ the sum of all villainies.” Viewed in the light of its own essen¬ 
 tial idea, of its own intrinsic nature, it involves a still profounder 
 guilt; for it not only contemplated the overthrow in morals and 
 legislation, of the distinction fundamental to all human civiliza¬ 
 tion, between person and property, but the extinction in a whole 
 race of men, of that divine spark which constitutes the manhood, 
 and gives to that distinction its validity. Thus, in import and 
 intention it outreached all secular crime, to sap the innermost 
 foundations of the immortal life. 
 
33 
 
 Only in the terrible glare cast upon it by the present war did 
 the true nature of the mastership, and the order of slavery found¬ 
 ed upon it, begin to reveal itself to the popular understanding. 
 We may well believe that when the great revolution now tran¬ 
 spiring shall have swept out of existence all its interests and pas¬ 
 sions, all the blindness and infatuation engendered by it, it will 
 be difficult for the future historian to realize or recall that state 
 of the public conscience in which its enormities were not only 
 deemed innocent, but here in the United States, were accepted 
 as an essential, component part of a great System of Democratic 
 Liberty and Christian civilization. 
 
 We still stand in the midst of that revolution. Its great work, 
 the regeneration of the reason and conscience of the nation 
 and of its public servants, has yet by no means been fully 
 accomplished. By a great law of the ethical Providence, the 
 struggle must continue until both are cleansed of the moral and 
 political pollutions and lies, that slavery has engendered there, 
 and the people and their rulers, accept with all their hearts and 
 in their true and broadest meaning “ the self evident truths ” of 
 the great declaration: “ that all men are created equal, that they 
 are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; 
 that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
 For, let us rest assured, that in these truths are contained the 
 germs, the vital forces of whatever national prosperity, civiliza¬ 
 tion, and history is possible to us as a people. 
 
 In all manner of official proclamations and manifestoes, it has 
 been repeatedly declared that the war on our part was waged 
 alone for the preservation of the constitution and the reestablish¬ 
 ment of the Union. But what would be the value of the letter 
 of the constitution unless quickened by the spirit of these “ self- 
 evident truths.” And what would the Union be, without the 
 inherent principle of cohesion, the living unity founded in these 
 truths ? 
 
 Reunion then, and the preservation of the essential life of the 
 constitution, demand, not only the release of the slave popula¬ 
 tion from their bonds and the degradation thereby imposed upon 
 them ; but the deliverance of the master population also, wholly 
 and forever, from their mastership, and from the fatal delusions 
 and depravations that are inherent in it. This is the primary 
 5 
 
34 
 
 necessity of any rational attempt to establish free labor and a 
 better social order in the Slave States, the very first step towards 
 any wise, or well-founded reconstruction; for in no other way can 
 the rebel States ever be rehabilitated with a truly loyal, demo¬ 
 cratic, concurrent citizenship. 
 
 And this brings me to speak of the means which, in the judg~ 
 ment of the Commission are deemed necessary to give practical 
 effect to the acts of Congress and the President’s Proclamation 
 of January, 1863, “ to the end that the colored population there¬ 
 by emancipated may defend and support themselves.” Their 
 recommendations embrace three principal measures, which with 
 more or less completeness have been heretofore, in their several 
 preliminary reports and are herewith, in their final report, sub¬ 
 mitted to the War Department. 
 
 The object of the first of these measures is to secure beyond 
 any possible peradventure or doubt, the civil right of the colored 
 man to personal freedom, by placing that right, in the new order 
 of thing, on the same broad basis as that of the white man. 
 
 In the Declaration of Independence, and in the Bills of 
 Right, contained in nearly all of the Constitutions of the States, 
 even in those of the Slave States, this right of Personal Liberty, 
 with others, considered as personal endowments of the Creator, 
 attributes of the human nature—are expressly reserved as above 
 all governmental interference, as too sacred to be meddled with 
 by human legislatures. And this doctrine is the keystone of 
 our whole system of Free Democratic Institutions. These 
 rights are as sacred in the person of the colored man as of the 
 white man ; and upon every consideration of justice to him, as 
 of safety to the commonweal and honor of the nation, ought to 
 be as securely guarantied, as sacredly guarded. 
 
 This is to be effected most surely by an amendment of the 
 Constitution of the United States. That measure is already be¬ 
 fore Congress, and although not exactly in the form recom¬ 
 mended by the Commission, yet it is believed sufficient, especially 
 if accompanied with other legislation in the same spirit and with 
 a like intent, to accomplish the great object proposed, and every 
 true lover of his country’s permanent peace, prosperity, and honor, 
 cannot but await with the greatest anxiety its final consumma¬ 
 tion. 
 
35 
 
 The second is a nieasure of scarcely less importance, and con¬ 
 sidering the exigencies of the approaching crisis and the present 
 temper and disposition of the master class, even more immedi¬ 
 ately urgent than the first. 
 
 Whenever civil authority shall he re-established in the rebel 
 States, and they shall be re-admitted to the Federal Union, the 
 greater portion of the civil and political rights of their inhabi¬ 
 tants, necessarily fall under the jurisdiction and control of State 
 authority. In all these States the colored people, even such of 
 them as have been always free, have been uniformly debarred 
 the enjoyment of all political and many civil rights. Unless, 
 therefore, the emancipated population have secured to them their 
 civil and political rights by national authority, antecedent to 
 such re-admission, they will stand in imminent danger of being 
 defrauded of any practical freedom, notwithstanding “ the acts of 
 Congress and the President’s Proclamation.” 
 
 In the language of a witness whose intimate acquaintance with 
 the spirit of the master-class, gives great weight to his words: 
 “ They had much better be slaves with the present feelings of 
 the Southern whites against them, than to be left without national 
 guarantees for the maintenance of their rights as freemen.” 
 
 It is the producing class—that class whose whole life is de¬ 
 voted to toil—that under every form of civil government is most 
 in danger of being made the victim of the leisure, capital, and 
 opportunities of the non-producing class. Under the most fa¬ 
 vorable circumstances, therefore, it is this class that most needs 
 and deserves to be fenced about with civil and political guar¬ 
 antees. But the circumstances and position of the emancipated 
 population are most unfavorable and critical. Without their 
 own volition, without previous preparation, and as a measure 
 of national self-preservation, they have been suddenly precipi¬ 
 tated into new and wholly untried relations with an antagonistic, 
 far more able and adroit class. To leave them in this position, 
 defenceless and at the mercy of their old masters, would in its 
 cruelest meaning be to keep with them “ the word of promise to 
 the ear and break it to the hope.” 
 
 Nay, not only the national honor, but future national peace 
 and well being demand that the National Government should 
 secure to these people now, while they are still under the sole 
 
36 
 
 jurisdiction and control of that government, the permanent pos¬ 
 session of such civil and political rights as will enable them “ to 
 defend and support themselves,” against the machinations and 
 schemes of any class or power to subject them again to any 
 form of slavery or serfdom. 
 
 To this end, I cannot too earnestly urge that Congress he in¬ 
 voked to fix and establish by law antecedent to, and as a condi¬ 
 tion precedent to reconstruction, the civil rights of the emanci¬ 
 pated population ; and, at the same time, to provide for the 
 future enjoyment by all free persons of color of the fundamen¬ 
 tal right of citizenship in a free government, the right to the 
 elective franchise, based upon the acquisition on their part, of 
 such qualifications only, as are deemed essential in their white 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
 Another matter intimately connected with the foregoing, and 
 as I believe, profoundly involving the existence and future pros¬ 
 perity of free society in the Southern States, is the disposition to 
 be made of the confiscated estates, or other forfeited lands in these 
 States. Iso such thing as free, democratic society can exist in 
 any country where all the lands are owned by one class of men 
 and are cultivated by another. Such ownership of the lands of 
 a country constitutes the basis of the most permanent and op¬ 
 pressive aristocracies. Upon this foundation stood, for a thousand 
 years, the feudal aristocracy of France. And, to-day, the aris¬ 
 tocracy of England maintain their supremacy upon the basis of 
 the partition and tenure of the soil of England, robbed by Wil¬ 
 liam the Conqueror from the original owners, the people of Eng¬ 
 land, and granted in large estates to his captains. 
 
 So incompatible has that tenure become with modern civiliza¬ 
 tion and the well-being of society in that country, that the 
 wisest statesmen there are beginning to apprehend the most 
 fearful consequences from its continued existence. 
 
 In the sugar and cotton producing portions of the South, 
 almost all the cultivated soil has been hitherto held in large 
 tracts by the master-class. 
 
 I need not stop to argue the utter incompatibility of such a 
 state of things with the existence of a free, independent, demo¬ 
 cratic yeomanry, or with the development of free democratic in¬ 
 stitutions. The poor whites of the South are a sufficient illus- 
 
37 
 
 tration of its pernicious influence and effect upon a whole com¬ 
 munity, of the same race with the landholders. 
 
 If not for the sake of the emancipated colored people, then for 
 the sake of these poor whites, these most pitiable men of our own 
 race, this whole scheme and tenure of the mastership should be 
 overthrown. The great necessity, as I have before intimated 
 from another point of view, which at the present hour lies upon 
 the people and Government of the United States, is not so much 
 a political as a social reconstruction of the Southern States. Any 
 well founded plan for the former, to be effectual and permanent, 
 must include the latter; and for the latter, the initiation of a 
 policy on the part of the National Government, which shall 
 have for its aim the ultimate division of the great plantations, 
 into moderate sized farms, to be held and cultivated by the labor 
 of their owners, is of the utmost importance. 
 
 I am aware that an opinion has been hitherto generally en¬ 
 tertained that sugar and cotton cultivation, could only be profi¬ 
 tably carried on upon large estates, and by the employment of 
 large gangs of laborers, principally because a large capital is ne¬ 
 cessary to the erection of the sugar mills, cotton gins, and other 
 machinery connected with the production of these commodities. 
 All the investigations of the Commission go to show, that this 
 opinion is but a part of the system of slavery, and has no foun¬ 
 dation in the necessities of the case. There is, in reality, no 
 more reason why the sugar cane should be raised and converted 
 into sugar by the planter alone, than there is that wheat should 
 be converted into flour, only by the farmer who raises it. And 
 so with the raising, ginning, and baling of cotton. On the con¬ 
 trary, a proper division of labor in the raising and manufacture 
 of sugar and cotton, would almost inevitably lead to a great de¬ 
 velopment in their production; while, at the same time, it 
 would tend not only to mitigate the labor, but to secure the in¬ 
 dustrial prosperity and independence of all those employed in 
 that production, and thus constitute an entirely different order 
 of social relation and condition in these States. I consider this 
 a matter next in importance to the permanent security of the 
 civil and political rights of the emancipated population, and beg 
 leave to recommend it to the earnest attention of the national 
 authorities. 
 
38 
 
 And, finally, permit me once more to call the attention of 
 Government to the third of the measures proposed by the Com¬ 
 mission—the establishment of some uniform system of super¬ 
 vision and guardianship for the emancipated population in the 
 interim of their transition from slavery to freedom, So one 
 acquainted with the facts conld hesitate a moment as to the 
 necessity and propriety of such a system ; not only for the sake 
 of the emancipated, but for the general interest of the Govern¬ 
 ment and country. 
 
 In the letter so frequently hereinbefore mentioned, General 
 Banks most forcibly says : “ It is undoubtedly true, as you say, 
 that for some time to come, and until the new order of things 
 shall be better understood by the employer and the employed, 
 and the free-labor system be more completely established, there 
 will be a necessity for some kind of Government supervision and 
 protectorate for the benefit of both parties.' 5 
 
 “ But this is not specially incident to the new system of negro 
 labor. It is only by Governmental supervision and assistance that 
 the labor of any race has been fostered and established. It is of 
 course as necessary for the blacks as for the whites, and if you 
 look at the stipulations which the blacks in this department have 
 themselves suggested, as the condition of their service, you will 
 find that their ideas embody in substance and in character, the 
 spirit of all statute legislation for the protection of white labor.” 
 
 “ It is no more incident to the condition of the blacks than of 
 any other class of people, except that they enter the arena of 
 civilization at a later period and the difficulties of their position 
 are presented at a glance and a remedy instantly demanded.” 
 
 All of which is respectfully submitted. 
 
 J. McKAYE, 
 
 Special Commissioner .