formerly a
slave-owner, writes:--

"God speed you in your noble work! Whenever I hear it said, 'The
Caucasian blood in Booker Washington is the cause of his success and
perseverance,' I answer, 'It is Principle.' I am a Southern white woman,
once a slave-owner, educated to think it right, and to believe that
coloured people could not provide for themselves, but would return to
cannibalism if brought from under their masters, and so I thought it
would be an awful thing for both races if they should be emancipated. I
have long ago seen the folly of such opinions, and have seen that
slavery was a horrible thing, and no one is more rejoiced than I am to
see the progress and prosperity and enlightenment of the coloured
people. Though a stranger in person, I am your true friend."

During the twelve years which followed the close of the Civil War, the
Southern States were in a condition of unrest, which was natural,
however, and was such as might have been expected after such a crisis as
that which had shaken and threatened the very existence of the Republic.
Considering what the relationship between the whites and the blacks had
been, and what kind of traditional views the former had been trained to
receive concerning the inferiority of the coloured race, we cannot
wonder that the planters, and those who were with them, should have been
appalled at the outlook. The situation became more anomalous, or even
dangerous, through the mistakes of the Northern politicians, quite as
much as through any want of charity, whether real or imaginary, on the
part of the Southern statesmen. There were wounds to be healed on both
sides, and there was too much of a disposition to maintain the
vindictive war spirit after the war was over. Those who aimed at
reconstruction certainly endangered their cause when they suddenly gave
to the negroes greater political privileges than they understood, or
would be able to use with any advantage to themselves. It would seem
that some ludicrous instances occurred of even the lower kind of negroes
being installed in important State offices. The result of this and many
more indiscretions was naturally to foment feelings of great bitterness
on both sides. If many in the North were disposed to make the
emancipated slaves a bone of contention--a means of punishing the States
which had wished to secede and to found a Commonwealth of their
own--they missed their mark and involved the coloured race in much
addit