of their legal rights. It was not true that there were great numbers of freedmen murdered by the whites, and by telling only the bad acts that had been committed and making these an index to society any large community could be pictured as barbarous. He had no doubt that in five years, unless some element of discord intervened, the freedmen would work as well and be in as prosperous condition as any person could desire, and that the rich and beautiful plantations would be far better cultivated and more profitable than ever in the past.

An instance of those making the contrary showing was found in Chaplain T. W. Conway, who said before a congressional committee in 1866 that he was under the painful conviction that if the Freedmen's Bureau was withdrawn the result would be fearful in the extreme. The negroes

would be murdered by wholesale and in their turn would defend themselves, with the result of slaughter which the world had never known before. "The Southern rebels when the power is once in their hands will stop at nothing short of extermination," for such threats had been made by prominent people in his own hearing and he believed it was their fixed determination. To his mind the only salvation for the freedmen was the strong arm of the government, for the wicked work had already commenced.

At

Assistant Commissioner Swayne reported from Alabama that Governor Patton vetoed measures which did not afford equal rights to the negroes. The contract plan was already established and in favor with planters because enforced by labor regulations issued by the Bureau, and, as idleness was extremely prevalent, Swayne carried out the system. the same time, he was inclined to think the less regulation the better, for, says he, "it has all the while been my opinion that the freedmen would be found to be best governed by the same measures as are most effectual with ourselves, and only injured by artificial regulations. The true incentives to labor in the free States are hunger and cold, and it was only injurious expectations of parcelling out at Christmas

that made freedmen evade these, in some measure, until Christmas came. This artificial barrier removed, normal relations were immediately established. The true security of labor, also in the free States, is that whenever the laborer finds himself ill-treated, or his wages insufficient or unsafe, he can quit without having to account to anybody. This is more and better than all laws. And the demand for labor will, I think, keep the freedmen secure here in this particular. It certainly makes him so now."

Kentucky was not so satisfactory to the Bureau, and General Fiske wrote that "there are some of the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally rebellious revolutionists in Kentucky that curse the soil of the country. They claim now that although the amendment to the Constitution forever abolishing and prohibiting slavery has been ratified, and proclamation thereof duly made, yet Congress must legislate to carry the amendment into effect, and therefore slavery is not dead in Kentucky. Others cling to the old barbarism with tenacity, claiming that the government must pay Kentucky for her emancipated slaves. There are a few public journals in the State which afford great comfort to the malcontents, but the majority of the people of Kentucky hail the dawn of universal liberty, and welcome the agency of the bureau in adjusting the new relations arising from the total abolition of slavery. It is well to remember that a more select number of vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than a majority of the Kentucky legislature. The President of the United States was denounced in the Senate as a worse traitor than Jefferson Davis, and that, too, before the bureau tempest had reached them."

General Tillson found in Georgia "the fact is becoming more and more evident that hereafter labor and not cotton is to be king. Please mark the prediction. If the government will only continue to stand by the freed people in their just rights simply, then, by the operations of laws infinitely more potential and certain in their execution than those of

Congress, the negro is to be master of the situation, and those who in times past practised cruelty upon him, or who now hate, despise, and defame him, are to be a financially ruined people. To-day the men who have been cruel to their slaves cannot hire freed people to work at any price. Fortunes in the future are for those only whom the freed people can trust and for whom they will worknot for the proud and haughty owner of land merely. Land, good land, will be plenty, a drug in the market; labor will be the difficult thing to obtain, and the friends of the freed people, especially the northern man, can alone command it."

General Osborn reported for Florida that "the high price of cotton is inducing planters to offer good wages for the next year's labor. Average wages will be twelve dollars a month for first-class hands, and these graded according to the capacity of the employés for labor. I have reason to believe that comparatively few freed people will be on public charity next year. Self-interest among the planters is doing much for these laborers. The people at large show a spirit of dislike or hatred to the freedmen that is hard to account for. The feeling among the little planters, lawyers, the members of the present legislature, the croakers and other small fry, is contemptible, while the substantial planters have a degree of consideration for the former slaves that could hardly be expected. They are paying quite well for this year, and offering good wages, quarters, and rations for the next, with the privilege of the laborer to keep his family with him at little expense. The little men quite generally attempt to hire single men, or reject those who have families from the plantation. The competition for labor in this State will compel these matters to remedy themselves."

Most of the great battles of the war had been fought in Virginia, and probably no State suffered quite so much from its results. It was to be expected, therefore, that there would be more bitterness of feeling there than elsewhere, and the people adjusted themselves to the operations of