ced submission as genuine loyalty, or even as cheerful
acquiescence in the national desire and purpose.

IV

Before the war, we heard continually of the love of the master for his
slave, and the love of the slave for his master. There was also much
talk to the effect that the negro lived in the midst of pleasant
surroundings, and had no desire to change his situation. It was asserted
that he delighted in a state of dependence, and throve on the universal
favor of the whites. Some of this language we conjectured might be
extravagant; but to the single fact that there was universal good-will
between the two classes every Southern white person bore evidence. So,
too, in my late visit to Georgia and the Carolinas, they generally
seemed anxious to convince me that the blacks had behaved well during
the war,--had kept at their old tasks, had labored cheerfully and
faithfully, had shown no disposition to lawlessness, and had rarely been
guilty of acts of violence, even in sections where there were many women
and children, and but few white men.

Yet I found everywhere now the most direct antagonism between the two
classes. The whites charge generally that the negro is idle, and at the
bottom of all local disturbances, and credit him with most of the vices
and very few of the virtues of humanity. The negroes charge that the
whites are revengeful, and intend to cheat the laboring class at every
opportunity, and credit them with neither good purposes nor kindly
hearts. This present and positive hostility of each class to the other
is a fact that will sorely perplex any Northern man travelling in either
of these States. One would say, that, if there had formerly been such
pleasant relations between them, there ought now to be mutual sympathy
and forbearance, instead of mutual distrust and antagonism. One would
say, too, that self-interest, the common interest of capital and labor,
ought to keep them in harmony; while the fact is, that this very
interest appears to put them in an attitude of partial defiance toward
each other. I believe the most charitable traveller must come to the
conclusion, that the professed love of the whites for the blacks was
mostly a monstrous sham or a downright false pretence. For myself, I
judge that it was nothing less than an arrant humbug.

The negro is no model of virtue or manliness. He loves idleness, he has
little conception of right and wrong, and he is improvident to the last
degree of ch