[1200] De Bow’s Review, March, 1866 (Dr. Nott); N. Y. Times, Oct. 3, 1865; Montgomery Advertiser, March 21, 1866.
[1201] Du Bois in Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901.
[1202] A Tallapoosa County farmer stated that for three years after the war the crops were very bad. Yet the whites who had negroes on their farms felt bound to support them. But if the whites tried to make the negroes work or spoke sharply to them, they would leave and go to the Bureau for rations. P. M. Dox, a Democratic member of Congress in 1870, said that in north Alabama, in 1866-1867, negro women would not milk a cow when it rained. Servants would not black boots. There was a general refusal to do menial service. Ala. Test., pp. 345, 1132. The Alabama cotton crop of 1860 was 842,729 bales; of 1865, 75,305 bales; of 1866, 429,102 bales; of 1867, 239,516 bales; of 1868, 366,193 bales. Of each crop since the war an increasingly large proportion has been raised by the whites.
[1203] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866.
[1204] Within the last five years I have seen several old negroes who said they had been paying assessments regularly to men who claimed to be working to get the “forty acres and the mule” for the negro. They naturally have little to say to white people on the subject. From what I have been told by former slaves, I am inclined to think that the negroes have been swindled out of many hard-earned dollars, even in recent times, by the scoundrels who claim to be paying the fees of lawyers at work on the negroes’ cases.
[1205] Swayne’s Report, Oct. 31, 1866; Freedmen’s Bureau Report, Dec., 1865; Grant’s Report; Truman’s Report, April 9, 1866; DeBow’s Review, March, 1866; Montgomery Advertiser, March 1, 1866; N. Y. News, Nov. 25, 1865 (Selma correspondent); N. Y. World, Nov. 13, 1865; N. Y. Times, Oct. 31, 1865; N. Y. News, Sept., and Oct. 2, 7, 1865. B. W. Norris, a Bureau agent from Skowhegan, Maine, told the negroes the tale of “forty acres and a mule,” and they sent him to Congress in 1868 to get the land for them. He told them that they had a better right to the land than the masters had. “Your work made this country what it is, and it is yours.” Ala. Test., pp. 445, 1131.
[1206] Ala. Test., p. 314.
[1207] Ball, “Clarke County,” p. 627.
[1208] Ala. Test., p. 1133.
[1209] Ala. Test., p. 460; see Annual Cyclopædia (1867), article “Confiscation.”