ce. In a State with 545,142 negroes in
1870, to 638,926 whites, they have virtually stamped out a
Republican party. The negro is afraid to vote, is not in many
places allowed on the jury, is punished severely for crimes, and
Mr. Nordhoff has told you that at least 25,000 of them have left
the State in the last five years; and yet in Georgia they pay
taxes on a large property. The negro in South Carolina sees what
has been done across the line, and he knows, or naturally fears,
that should the white man rule here the same results will follow.
As a consequence, therefore, the negro is in the hands of the
adventurer. He fears that his master will make him a slave, or
reduce him to a condition akin to slavery. The result is,
therefore, that not one of them will vote the Democratic ticket.
I have heard of Democratic negroes, but I have seen none. I have
spoken on this subject with Southern men in Florida, Georgia,
North and South Carolina, and there is only one story. "I have
negroes here," said one eminent gentleman, "who were my slaves in
the old time. They hang around my house. They will fight for me,
work for me and bring me their money to keep. They take my advice
in all things, and are trustworthy and devoted. They will not
vote for me. My coachman there will vote against me and in favor
of the meanest Republican in the county." The negro thus far sees
nothing in politics but his own freedom. He votes for Grant all
the time. His political education embraces a sentiment and a
fact. The sentiment is Lincoln, the fact is Grant. I was talking
to a woolly headed vagabond the other day, who had learned that I
was a Northern man, and wanted to go home with me as an
attendant. He was a worthless, ragged, shining darky, as black as
night, and earned his living, he told me, by dancing the juba for
gentlemen on the sidewalk when the police were not looking.
During the war he was a slave lad. "Did you know you were free,"
I said, "before the war was over?" He told me that the news came
very quickly; that they all kept "mighty shady," never pretending
to know until "Massa Sherman came with the soldiers." But they
knew it all the time, and there was never a night that his "old
mammie didn't pray to Massa Lincoln." This is the thought that
has burned deep in