I visited the orphanage a number of times. The matron said the little fellow learned his name very readily. Here was a pair of twin boys, about two years old, very black and smart. As they quarreled so much of the time, Judge Fitzhugh proposed to name them Abe and Jeff, after the two Presidents. Though a strong Confederate, he said they were smarter than any white children he ever saw, and to prove his position he called them out to dance, as he had taught them to step the figure. He sang for them, and they danced to his music.
"There, I'll venture to say," he said, "you never saw two white children of their age do that. I tell you the negro race is naturally smarter than the Anglo-Saxon."
I told him I was surprised at this remark, when he had told me a few minutes before that the negroes would soon die out, because they could not take care of themselves.
"That is true," he rejoined, "and I have written a book in which I take the same position, and can prove it. They will do more work than white people can, but they lack calculation; hence the necessity of their being under the supervision of the whites." We have the planning faculty, and they have the ability to do the work. There is therefore a necessity for both races to work together to be a successful people. I repeat what I told you before, that we never shall prosper separated. The power of governing must remain with the Anglo-Saxon race, and God has so designed. The Yankees have made a sad mistake in freeing the slave, for in time they will become extinct; but God will never suffer this state of things to remain, and you will see the South in power in two years, and the North minus the power she now wields.
I cited him to black men in Canada, who had escaped from slavery and who had acquired wealth, and to one of the wealthiest livery men in their own city. I also referred to a shoemaker who had been free but a few months.
His credit was sufficient to purchase ten dollars' worth of stock, which he made up and sold, paying for his stock; he then made another purchase and was hard at work to purchase a little home. His wife was washing and house-cleaning, with the same object in view. They told me they allowed themselves meat but once a week, and lived on corn-bread, mush, and molasses, and that they intended to live and work in this way until they should succeed.
"Does not this look like calculation?" I asked.
"I admit," he said, "there are isolated cases, but it is not the rule."
He gave me his book to read, entitled "Sociology of the South, by J. Fitzhugh, Att'y." I found it a perfect bundle of inconsistencies. He goes into a labored argument against free-labor, free-schools, free-press and free-speech, as destructive to a prosperous people. He claimed to be a cousin of Gerrit Smith's wife, and said that they were crazy over slavery. He also claimed that President Johnson was doing all he could for them, and that through him they were going to have their rights restored. He knew of men who had gathered half a bushel of Confederate money, and said they should keep it until it would be worth as much as greenbacks. He also knew men who had bills of sale of negroes, a foot deep, that they were keeping to recover their slaves, or pay for them; and he was confident that it would be accomplished within two years. This I found to be a very general feeling among the most prominent Confederates.
On September 20th I visited a number of sick that I supplied with bedding and clothing. I walked six miles that day, and then went to the office of the Freedmen's Bureau, where I was furnished with an ambulance and driver to take things to the sufferers I had visited.