Charlotte, at which chance travellers are fleeced at the rate of four dollars per day regular charges, and another dollar for extras, complained that "the nasty niggers must have a parasol when they ha'n't got no shoes." One of two misses who passed me on the street one day in Raleigh was scolding because her girl had stolen her veil, and she added, finally, "She got so crazy for it that ma had to get her one." A gentlemen of this place with whom I spoke this morning professed great amusement at a fact of his observation, - that full-blooded negro wenches carry a parasol and wear a white handkerchief around the neck to protect themselves from the sun. An officer of the Freedmen's Bureau told me the wearing of black veils by the young negro women had given great offence to the young white women, and that there was a time earlier in the season when the latter would not wear them at all. Does this matter of veils and parasols and handkerchiefs seem a small one? Yet it is one of serious import to the bitter, spiteful women whose passionate hearts nursed the Rebellion. I have, one way and another, heard so much about it, that I am not at liberty to suppose it a mere matter of local or temporary grievance. Wretched negro girls, you of sprawling feet and immense lips and retreating foreheads and coal-black color, cease from your vagaries! Cease from such sore troubling of the placid and miasmatic waters of good society!

"The nigger is crazy to ride, to own an old mule and an old cart, and to be seen driving through the streets,” said an ex-Rebel colonel to me at Charlotte. "A negro has reached kingdom come," remarked my seat-mate in the wearisome ride last night from Goldsboro, "when he's got on horseback." And it seems to give grave offence to the gentry of the State that the negro likes riding better than walking, that he will insist on buying a poor old mule and a poor old cart and going into business for himself! In this grief is indirect proof that Sambo appreciates the situation, and is anxious to be at work for himself as soon as possible.

To his average good disposition is due the fact that in many counties slavery still exists as a fact even if abolished as a name. I make this assertion only after much inquiry into the condition of things. The State is so large and sparsely settled, and means of communicating with some sections are so unfavorable, that even the Freedmen's Bureau has not yet found all the counties. When the Freedmen's Convention deliberately asks the general commanding the department to give some of its members safe return to their homes, there is such testimony to the existence of the old condition of slavery unconsciously furnished as no amount of negation can overweigh; and when one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention chuckles over the fact that some of his constituents don't yet know that slavery is abolished, he furnishes proof unquestionable as to the actual situation.

"What my people wants first," said an intelligent colored man to me at Salisbury, "what dey fust wants is de right to be free." He compassed the whole case in few words. In other States, where their number in proportion to the num ber of whites is greater than it is here, or where the revolution made by the war has been deeper, they assume and hold this first right, to be free, assume and hold it to their harm, doubtless, in thousands of cases; but here, in many counties, even this primary right is yet denied them. Some of the delegates to the Freedmen's Convention were obliged to sneak off from home in the night, and expected punishment on their return. The negro is no model of virtue, and he delights in laziness and the excitement of the city; but, on the whole, I think he is bearing himself very well in North Carolina, with credit to himself and to his friends.

So far as I can learn, the intelligent colored men are pleading very little as yet for the right of suffrage, but very much for the right to testify in the courts. "We can live without a vote, but not without the right to speak for our

antici

selves,” said one of them to me at Greensboro, pating the sentiment of the lame barber here who observed, as he brushed my hair this morning, and emphasized his words with a thump of my head for which he made a hundred apologies, "To be sure, sah, we wants to vote, but, sah, de great matter is to git into de witness-box." One of the leading lawyers of the western part of the State, a former District Attorney and member of the Legislature, told a friend of mine that he knows no prominent member of the bar who does not favor the admission to the courts of negro evidence. I presume it is true that many leading men of the State occupy this ground; but the distance between these leading men and the common people is very great; and I am sorrowfully certain that the latter are far from being willing to allow the negro to be heard in court in his own behalf.

"We are too poor to educate our own children now,” said Delegate Settle; "and much as I wish for the education of the negro, his help will have to come from the North at present." It is something to get a desire that the negro shall be educated, and Mr. Settle is one of those who want him colonized. The North took Mr. Settle at his spirit before he uttered his word, and this year has in operation, in various parts of the State, about fifty schools, under charge of about sixty teachers, and embracing nearly five thousand different pupils. Most of these teachers are ladies, not a few of whom are from Massachusetts. The State Superintendent reports a good degree of progress, and the most indifferent inquiry anywhere among the negroes develops a living and grasping interest.

The labor system, as I have already said, is in better order than in South Carolina. The negroes are not, however, any better paid than there. Where they work for a share of the crop they get from one fourth to one third.

Many of them, though, are working for regular wages, —

six to eight dollars per month with board, and nine to twelve dollars without board. The planters and farmers rather pride themselves on the liberality of these wages; but they are, of course, utterly insufficient for anything more than bare support. There is less complaint here than below that the negro fails to observe his contract. The local county police does much to keep down disorder, and doubtless is something of a terror to negroes of vicious tendencies who would like to desert their work.

Yet it cannot be denied that there are conflicts between employers and employed, and some careful and observant officers tell me they are increasing because of the injustice of some masters who strive to keep up the old authority of slave days. "It is generally known that the prejudice and bitterness is increasing between the whites and the blacks," says one Raleigh paper; and "clashings between the races are unfortunately becoming more and more frequent," responds Governor Holden's organ. The real question of the hour is neither one of suffrage nor one of giving testimony, but one of establishing the true relations of employer and employed. The true course is luminously indicated by another paper of the State: "If the employers, and especially the late slave-owners, will treat the blacks kindly and justly, these troubles that now annoy us will soon pass away." Will the white man be wise in season? For the negro, strong in his longing for freedom, gropes blindly and passionately, and will not be cheated of what the earth, and the very heavens themselves, assure him is his right.

XXI.

THE GREAT MILITARY PRISON OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

WITHIN THE STOCKADE, FLORENCE, October 19, 1865.

OES it seem affectation that I date my letter from

"Within the Stockade"? At least I write it there, write it in my note-book, on my knee, sitting on a block of wood, in one of the hut houses built by the hands of those who served the cause of Union and Liberty in the prisons of secession and slavery, write it to the accompaniment of glaring lightning and crashing thunder and driving rain. Will these mud walls shelter me through the storm of this hot afternoon? I cannot forget that they have sheltered men who perilled vastly more than ease and comfort; and as I look through the hole that they called a door," and see the acres of such barbaric but sanctified habitations, I lift reverent heart of thanksgiving to Him who gave us the victory, and blessed the struggle and suffering of that great army through whom we have national unity and the assured promise of universal freedom.

Florence is a name rather than a place; or, say, a point at which three railroads centre, rather than a town. There is a hotel, and a church, and a machine-shop, and two socalled stores, and three bar-rooms, and twenty-five or thirty residences, and a great pine forest. There is a long, broad street; at one end of which is the hotel, a somewhat pretentious two-story wood building, with a wide and lofty piazza in front, and an ungainly tower in the centre. At the farther end of the street are the stores and the machineshop. Midway are the apothecary's, and the hospital, and a vacant law office. Back of this street, in the pines, are the