“The press and people here, with one voice, are loud in their praise of President Johnson, for his wholesale manner of dispensing pardons. But I have yet to see the first signs of repentance on the part of those who have received clemency from the Chief Magistrate of the Government. The existing feeling is, that no man who did not support the Confederacy is worthy of trust; and all offices are given to those who did their best to break up the country. President Johnson will find in the end that he has been too liberal in the exercise of clemency. And unless he changes his course, or is checked by Congress, the most corrupt men in the South will again get into power, and sway the destinies of this section of the country.
…
“And until the labor question is adjusted between the planters and the freedmen, we cannot look forward to a time of prosperity. The indications at present are not favorable to a satisfactory solution of this difficult problem. The planters hate the negro, and the latter class distrust the former; and while this state of things continues, there cannot be harmonious action in developing the resources of the country. Besides, a good many men are unwilling yet to believe that the ‘peculiar institution’ of the South has been actually abolished, and still have the lingering hope that Slavery, though not in name, will yet in some form practically exist. And hence the great anxiety to get back into the Union, which being accomplished, they will then, as I have heard it expressed, ‘fix the negro.’
…
“I look forward with deep solicitude to the approaching session of Congress. I hope there will be strength and moral courage enough in that body to keep the ship of state right. The President has a difficult position to fill, and needs all the sympathy and aid he can get from right-minded citizens. But there is no question that he has been most sadly imposed upon within the past few months by designing and corrupt politicians.”
Another private letter, from a person so situated as to be accurately informed, makes this painful report:—
“The Government, in taking the responsibility of freeing this people, tacitly engaged to protect them in their freedom. The various departments of Government have solemnly declared the black man entitled to equal rights before the law with the white man. Yet it is the simple fact, capable of indefinite proof, that the black man does not receive the faintest shadow of justice. I aver that in nine cases out of ten within my own observation, where a white man has provoked an affray with a black, and savagely misused him, the black man has been fined for insolent language, because he did not receive the chastisement in submissive silence, while the white man has gone free. It is the simple truth that the most flagrant crimes against the blacks are not noticed at all; and, indeed, a man loses caste, if he interests himself about them.
“It is the simple truth that black men are not allowed to use their own property to the best advantage, or in any way to make such use of their capabilities as would be likely to elevate them in social position.
…