ral thing, the people were
grateful for the moderation of the Yankees, and appreciated the good
they had done at the fire. But, deeper than any bitterness could have
sunk, was that ingrained feeling that there were two peoples that these
could never again mingle in former amity, till oil and water might mix.
The men especially--and with much apparent reason--were utterly
hopeless of the future; and, collecting in knots, they would gloomily
discuss the prospect of emigration, as if that were the sole good the
future held. There can be little doubt that had the ability been
theirs, a large majority of the young men of the South would have gone
abroad, to seek their fortunes in new paths and under new skies.
Luckily, for their country, the commander at Richmond failed to keep
his agreement with the paroled officers; and--after making out rolls of
those who would be granted free permission and passage to Canada,
England or South America--those rolls were suddenly annulled and the
whole matter given up. Thus a number of useful, invaluable men who have
ever since fought the good fight against that outrage--the imposition
of negro dominance over her--were saved to the South.

And that good fight, begun in the natural law of self-preservation, has
eventuated to the interests of a common country. For no one who does
not intimately understand the character of the negro--his mental and
moral, as well as his physical, constitution--can begin to comprehend
the sin committed against him, even more than against the white man, by
putting him in the false attitude of equality with, or antagonism to,
the latter.

No one, who did not move among the negroes, immediately after conquest
of the South--and who did not see them with experience-opened eyes--can
approach realization of the pernicious workings of that futile attempt.

Writing upon the inner details of the war and its resulting action upon
the morale of the southern people, omission can not be made of that
large and unfortunate class; driven--first by blind fanaticism, later
by fear of their own party existence--into abnormal condition by the
ultra radicals. The negro rapidly changed; "equality" frittered away
what good instincts he had and developed all the worst, innate with
him. It changed him from a careless and thriftless, but happy and
innocent producer, into a mere consumer, at best; often indeed, into a
besotted and criminal idler, subsisting in part upon Nature's
genero