gentleman maliciously tell his tale, and go on his way laughing. The result was high excitement among the belles of the Anglo-Saxon race, and much feminine chaffing of the Hon. Mr. Blank. What made the matter worse was, that on the day of the fair he had accepted an invitation to a young ladies' reading - society, and then had withdrawn it, because of the invitation from the humble race which held festivity at the Bureau school-house.

"What! going to disappoint us for those people!" a fair patrician had said to him. "We ought to cut your acquaintance."

"My dear, I can't disappoint them," he had replied, very wisely and nobly. "When people whom God has placed so far beneath me ask for my presence, I must give it. It is like an invitation from the queen. It is a command."

That had been comprehended and pardoned; but to call Jenny Whandsomer than them all! The Hon. Mr. Blank was bullied into making explanations.

But this gossip was matter of laughter, without a shade of serious umbrage or jealousy, so secure is the AngloSaxon race in its social pre-eminence. Between the mulattoes and negroes the question is far different; the former are already anxious to distinguish themselves from the pure Africans; the latter are already sore under the superiority thus asserted. Were the two breeds more equally divided in numbers, there would be such hostility between them as has been known in Hayti and Jamaica. The mixed race in our country is, however, so small, and its power of self-perpetuation so slight, that it will probably be absorbed in the other. Meantime it holds more than its share of intelligence, and of those qualities which go to the acquisition of property.

With a Bureau officer who was stationed in the lowlands of South Carolina, I compared impressions as to the political qualifications and future of the negro. "In my district," he said, "the

election was a farce. Very few of the freedmen had any idea of what they were doing, or even of how they ought to do it. They would vote into the post-office, or any hole they could find. Some of them carried home their ballots, greatly smitten with the red lettering and the head of Lincoln, or supposing that they could use them as warrants for land. Others would give them to the first white man who offered to take care of them. One old fellow said to me, 'Lord, marsr! do for Lord's sake tell me what dis yere 's all about.' I explained to him that the election was to put the State back into the Union, and make it stay there in peace.

Lord bless you, marsr! I'se might glad to un'erstan' it,' he answered. 'I'se the only nigger in this yere districk now that knows what he's up ter.'"

In my own district things were better. A region of small farmers mainly, the negroes had lived nearer to the whites than on the great plantations of the low country, and were proportionately intelligent. The election in Greenville was at least the soberest and most orderly that had ever been known there. Obedient to the instructions of their judicious managers, the freedmen voted quietly, and went immediately home, without the reproach of a fight or a drunkard, and without even a hurrah of triumph. Their little band of music turned out in the evening to serenade a favorite candidate, but a word from him sent them home with silent trumpets, and the night was remarkable for tranquillity. Even the youngsters who sometimes rowdied in the streets seemed to be sensible of the propriety of unusual peace, and went to bed early. Judging from what I saw that day, I should have halcyon hopes for the political future of the negro.

My impression is, although I cannot make decisive averment in the matter, that a majority of the Greenville freedmen had a sufficiently intelligent sense of the purport of the election. The stupidest of them understood that he

shal of South Carolina assured them of the fallacy of their hopes that they dismissed them. Admissions were then made; nearly all coincided in fixing the fatal pistol-shot upon one; and that one was hung.

This affair is mainly important as showing how easily the negroes can be led into folly and crime. Themselves a peaceful race, not disposed to rioting and murder, they were brought without trouble to both by the counsels of the ignorant and pugnacious whites who became their leaders in the Loyal Leagues. Not three days after the Hunnicutt tragedy, a farmer from Pickens District called on me to obtain a permit for an armed meeting of Union men, and seemed quite dumbfoundered when I not only refused the permit, but assured him that, if he attempted to hold such a meeting, I would have him arrested. In justice to the Union men and the negroes, however, it must be remembered that they have been governed by the mailed hand; and that, in seeking to enforce their political ideas by steel and gunpowder, they are but following the example of the high-toned gentlemen who formerly swayed the South. On the whole, we must admit that, although they have committed more follies and crimes than were at all desirable, they have committed fewer than might reasonably have been expected, considering the nature of their political education. In their rule thus far there has been less of the vigilance committee than in that which preceded it.

At least one of the political privileges of the negroes is already a heavy burden to them. Every day or two some ragged fellow stepped into my office with the inquiry, "I wants to know ef I've got to pay my taxes."

"Certainly," I was bound to reply, for the general commanding had declared that the civil laws were in force, and moreover I knew that the State was tottering for lack of money.

"But the sheriff, he's put it up to eight dollars now, an' when he first named it to me he said it was three,

an' when I went to see him about it arterward he said it was five. 'Pears like I can't git at the rights of the thing nohow, an' they's jes tryin' to leave me without anything to go upon."

"My dear fellow, you should have paid up when you were first warned. The additions since then are charges for collection. The longer you put it off, the more it will cost you. You had better settle with the sheriff without any further delay, or you may be sold out.”

"Wal, 'pears like it's mighty hard on us, an' we jes a startin'. I was turned off year befo' las' without a grain o' corn, an' no lan'. Boss, is they comin' on us every year for these yere taxes?"

"I suppose so. How else are the laws to be kept up, and the poor old negroes to be supported?"

Exit freedman in a state of profound discouragement, looking as if he wished there were no laws and no poor old negroes.

The taxes were indeed heavy on labor, especially as compared with wages. Eight dollars a month, with rations and lodging, was all that the best field hand could earn in Greenville District; and those freedmen who took land on shares generally managed, by dint of unintelligent cultivation and of laziness, to obtain even less. I knew of able-bodied women who were working for nothing but their shelter, food, and two suits of cheap cotton clothing per annum.

As a result of this wretched remuneration there was an exodus. During the fall of 1866 probably a thousand freed-people left my two districts of Pickens and Greenville to settle in Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Only a few had the enterprise or capital to go by themselves; the great majority were carried off by planters and emigration agents. Those who went to Florida contracted for twelve dollars a month, a cabin, a gardenpatch, fuel, and weekly rations consisting of one peck of meal, two pounds of bacon, and one pint of molasses; but on reaching their destination, and seeing the richness of the land, they some

times flew from their bargains and secured a new one, giving them one third of the crop in place of wages, and increasing the quantity and quality of their rations. The emigrants to Louisiana and Arkansas went on the basis of fifteen dollars a month, lodgings, patch, fuel, and food; and then kept their contracts if they pleased, or violated them under the temptation of thirty, forty, and even fifty dollars a month. The negroes having never been taught the value of honesty by experience, nor much of its beauty by precept, are frequently slippery. The planters, pressingly in need of labor, were generally obliged to accede to their demands.

On the other hand, the emigration agents were accused of some sharp practice, and particularly of leaving their emigrants at points whither they had not agreed to go. A freedman who had contracted to work at Memphis might be landed at Franklin in Louisiana without knowing the difference. In short, the matter went on more or less smoothly, with some good results and some evil. Labor was transferred in considerable masses from where it was not wanted to where it was. The beneficent effects of the migration were of course much diminished by the accidental circumstances of the overflows in Louisiana, and the fall in the value of the cotton crop everywhere. Moreover, these negroes of the mountains suffered nearly as much from lowland fevers as if they were white men from our Northern frontiers.

Will the freedmen acquire property and assume position among the managers of our national industry? Already a division is taking place among them: there are some who have clearly benefited by emancipation, and others who have not; the former are becoming what the Southerners term "decent niggers," and the latter are turning into poor black trash. The low-down negro will of course follow the low-down white into sure and deserved oblivion. His more virtuous and vital brother will struggle longer with the law of natural

selection; and he may eventfully hold a portion of this continent against the vigorous and terrible Caucasian race; that portion being probably those lowlands where the white cannot or will not labor. Meantime the negro's acquisition of property, and of those qualities which command the industry of others, will be slow. What better could be expected of a serf so lately manumitted?

When I first took post in Greenville, I used to tell the citizens that soon their finest houses would be in possession of blacks; but long before I left there I had changed my opinion. Although land in profusion was knocked down for a song on every monthly sale day, not more than three freedmen had purchased any, and they not more than an acre apiece. What little money they earned they seemed to be incapable of applying to solid and lasting purpose; they spent it for new clothes and other luxuries, or in supporting each other's idleness; they remained penniless, where an Irishman or German would thrive. Encumbered with debt as are many of the whites of Greenville, deficient as they may be in business faculty and industry, they need not fear that black faces will smile out of their parlor windows. The barbarian and serf does not so easily rise to be the employer and landlord of his late master.

For

What is to become of the African in our country as a race? Will he commingle with the Caucasian, and so disappear? It is true that there are a few marriages, and a few cases of illegal cohabitation, between negro men and the lowest class of white women. example, a full-blooded black walked twenty miles to ask me if he could have a white wife, assuring me that there was a girl down in his "settlement" who was "a teasin' every day about it."

He had opened his business with hesitation, and he talked of it in a tremulous undertone, glancing around for fear of listeners. I might have told him that, as it was not leap year, the woman had no right to propose to him;

but I treated the matter seriously. Bearing in mind that she must be a disreputable creature, who would make him a wretched helpmeet, I first informed him that the marriage would be legal, and that the civil and military authorities would be bound to protect him in it, and then advised him against it, on the ground that it would expose him to a series of underhanded persecutions which could not easily be prevented. He went away evidently but half convinced, and I presume that his Delilah had her will with him, although I heard no more of this odd love affair. But such cases are as yet rare, and furthermore the low-downers are a transient race. Free labor and immigration from the North or Europe will extirpate or elevate them within half a century.

Miscegenation between white men and negresses has diminished under the new order of things. Emancipation has broken up the close family contact in which slavery held the two races, and, moreover, young gentlemen do not want mulatto children sworn to them at a cost of three hundred dollars apiece. In short, the new relations of the two stocks tend to separation rather than to fusion. Consequently there will be no amalgamation, no merging and disappearance of the black in the white, except at a period so distant that it is not worth while now to speculate upon it. So far as we and our children and grandchildren are concerned, the negro will remain a negro, and must be prophesied about as a negro.

But will he remain a negro, and not rather become a ghost? It is almost ludicrous to find the "woman question" intruding itself into the future of a being whom we have been accustomed to hear of as a "nigger," and whom a ponderous wise man of the East persists in abusing as "Quashee." There is a growing disinclination to marriage among the young freedmen, because the girls are learning to shirk out-of-door work, to demand nice dresses and furniture, and, in short, to be fine ladies. The youths

have, of course no objection to the adornment itself; indeed, they are, like white beaux, disposed to follow the game which wears the finest feathers; but they are getting clever enough to know that such game is expensive, and to content themselves with looking at it. Where the prettiest colored girls in Greenville were to find husbands was more than I could imagine.

There are other reasons why the blacks will not increase as rapidly as before the emancipation. The young men have more amusements and a more varied life than formerly. Instead of being shut up on the plantation, they can spend the nights in frolicking about the streets or at drinking-places; instead of the monotony of a single neighborhood, they can wander from village to village and from South Carolina to Texas. The master is no longer there to urge matrimony, and perhaps other methods of increasing population. Negroes, as well as whites, can now be forced by law to support their illegitimate offspring, and are consequently more cautious than formerly how they have such offspring.

In short, the higher civilization of the Caucasian is gripping the race in many ways, and bringing it to sharp trial before its time. This new, varied, costly life of freedom, this struggle to be at once like a race which has passed through a two thousand years' growth in civilization, will unquestionably diminish the productiveness of the negro, and will terribly test his vitality.

It is doubtless well for his chances of existence that his color keeps him a plebeian, so that, like the European peasant held down by caste, he is less tempted to destroy himself in the struggle to become a patrician.

What judgment shall we pass upon abrupt emancipation, considered merely with reference to the negro? It is a mighty experiment, fraught with as much menace as hope.

To the white race alone it is a certain and precious boon.