the negroes.

E. S. P. TO W. C. G.[187]

_Boston, Oct. 5._ C. F. Williams has gone down to finish surveying my
land, and will cut up and sell for me to the negroes about as much
land as they have been in the habit of using,--good, arable land, at
$5 per acre, where they are not already provided.

R. S., JR., TO C. P. W.

_Coffin's Point, Oct. 9._ I have no reason to complain of my people
for any extraordinary delinquencies, for they have worked as well as
we shall probably ever be able to get these negroes to work; but I
have frequently had occasion to be vexed at their slow, shiftless
habits and at their general stupidity. It is a very great trial to
any Northern man to have to deal with such a set of people, and I am
satisfied that if Northerners emigrate to the South and undertake
agriculture or anything else here, they will be compelled to import
white laborers. In the first place, they will not have the patience to
get along with the negroes, even if there were enough of these
freedmen to do all the work. But, in the second place, there will not
be one quarter enough of them to supply the demand there will be for
laborers when the uncleared land at the South is brought under
cultivation. The old slaveholders could never get hands enough, and
yet they cultivated only about one tenth of the land that is fit for
cotton.

It need hardly be said that this prophecy has not yet been
fulfilled.

E. S. P. TO W. C. G.

_Boston, Oct. 15._ I have had a letter from Charleston written by a
lawyer on behalf of Captain John Fripp and his three daughters! The
writer says but little about his legal rights, but appeals to my
"sense of justice and generosity," to see if some compromise can't be
made. He doesn't say exactly what he wants, but intimates that both
parties could profit by such an arrangement and save the vexations of
a law suit. I don't see exactly what he has got to give, except his
old title, which he probably values a good deal higher than I do. I
wrote him telling him I was hampered in acts of "generosity" by the
fact that the present title was not in me alone, but that about a
dozen other gentlemen were interested, and asked him to make us a
definite proposition. You may see by the papers that General Howard
is sent by the President to see if he can reconcile the claims of the
negroes on Edisto and other islands with those of the former owners
who clamor to be reinstated in their position. I g