illage desire to introduce a
white teacher, the prohibition would become an obvious outrage, which
hardly any administration would risk the odium of maintaining. The
injury, in a business point of view, done by separation would perhaps
strike deeper, and be harder to correct. Here, for instance, is the
flourishing negro village of Mitchellville, just outside of the
fortifications of Hilton Head. All that is produced in the numerous
garden-patches of the suburb is to be sold in the town; all the clothing
that is to be worn in the suburb must be obtained in exchange for the
garden-products. Yet, if newspaper correspondents tell truth, the
temporary commander of that post has taken it on himself to forbid white
men from trading in Mitchellville, or black men at Hilton Head. How,
then, is business to be transacted? Are the inhabitants of the town to
be allowed to come to the sally-port of the fortifications, hand out a
yard of ribbon and receive two eggs in return? If the entire exchanges
are to be intrusted to a few privileged favorites, black or white, then
another source of fraud is added to those which lately, in connection
with the recruiting bounties, have been brought to bear upon the
freedmen of that Department, and, if the truth be told, under the same
auspices from which this order proceeds. Be this as it may, it seems a
pity that these poor people, who are just learning what competition
means, and will walk five miles farther to a shop where dry goods are
retailed a little cheaper, should be checked and hampered in their
little commerce by an attempt to abolish all the laws of political
economy in their favor.

If the freedmen were a race like the Indians, wasting away by unseen
laws through the mere contact of the white man, the case would be very
different. Or if they were a timid and dependent race, needing to be
thrust roughly from the nest, like young birds, and made self-dependent,
the difference would be greater still. But it is not so. The negro race
fits into the white race, and thrives by its side; and the farther
South, the greater the thriving. The emancipated slave is also
self-relying, and, if fair play be once given, can hold his own against
his former master, whether in trade or in war. He is improvident while
in slavery, as is the Irishman in Ireland, because he has no opportunity
to be anything else. Shift the position, and the man changes with
it,--becoming, whether Irishman or negro, a shrewd