ildishness. He is a creature,--as some of our own people
will do well to keep carefully in mind,--he is a creature just forcibly
released from slavery. The havoc of war has filled his heart with
confused longings, and his ears with confused sounds of rights and
privileges: it must be the nation's duty, for it cannot be left wholly
to his late master, to help him to a clear understanding of these rights
and privileges, and also to lay upon him a knowledge of his
responsibilities. He is anxious to learn, and is very tractable in
respect to minor matters; but we shall need almost infinite patience
with him, for he comes very slowly to moral comprehensions.

Going into the States where I went,--and perhaps the fact is true also
of the other Southern States,--going into Georgia and the Carolinas, and
not keeping in mind the facts of yesterday, any man would almost be
justified in concluding that the end and purpose in respect to this poor
negro was his extermination. It is proclaimed everywhere that he will
not work, that he cannot take care of himself, that he is a nuisance to
society, that he lives by stealing, and that he is sure to die in a few
months; and, truth to tell, the great body of the people, though one
must not say intentionally, are doing all they well can to make these
assertions true. If it is not said that any considerable number wantonly
abuse and outrage him, it must be said that they manifest a barbarous
indifference to his fate, which just as surely drives him on to
destruction as open cruelty would.

There are some men and a few women--and perhaps the number of these is
greater than we of the North generally suppose--who really desire that
the negro should now have his full rights as a human being. With the
same proportion of this class of persons in a community of Northern
constitution, it might be justly concluded that the whole community
would soon join or acquiesce in the effort to secure for him at least a
fair share of those rights. Unfortunately, however, in these Southern
communities the opinion of such persons cannot have such weight as it
would in ours. The spirit of caste, of which I have already spoken, is
an element figuring largely against them in any contest involving
principle,--an element of whose practical workings we here know very
little. The walls between individuals and classes are so high and broad,
that the men and women who recognize the negro's rights and privileges
as a free