ly to such laws as apply to the whites.

I think the freedmen divide themselves into four classes: one fourth
recognizing; very clearly, the necessity of work, and going about it
with cheerful diligence and wise forethought; one fourth comprehending
that there must be labor, but needing considerable encouragement to
follow it steadily; one fourth preferring idleness, but not specially
averse to doing some job-work about the towns and cities; and one fourth
avoiding labor as much as possible, and living by voluntary charity,
persistent begging, or systematic pilfering. It is true, that thousands
of the aggregate body of this people appear to have hoped, and perhaps
believed, that freedom meant idleness; true, too, that thousands are
drifting about the country or loafing about the centres of population in
a state of vagabondage. Yet of the hundreds with whom I talked, I found
less than a score who seemed beyond hope of reformation. It is a cruel
slander to say that the race will not work, except on compulsion. I made
much inquiry, wherever I went, of great numbers of planters and other
employers, and found but very few cases in which it appeared that they
had refused to labor reasonably well, when fairly treated and justly
paid. Grudgingly admitted to any of the natural rights of man, despised
alike by Unionists and Secessionists, wantonly outraged by many and
meanly cheated by more of the old planters, receiving a hundred cuffs
for one helping hand and a thousand curses for one kindly word,--they
bear themselves toward their former masters very much as white men and
women would under the same circumstances. True, by such deportment they
unquestionably harm themselves; but consider of how little value life is
from their stand-point. They grope in the darkness of this transition
period, and rarely find any sure stay for the weary arm and the fainting
heart. Their souls are filled with a great, but vague longing for
freedom; they battle blindly with fate and circumstance for the unseen
and uncomprehended, and seem to find every man's hand raised against
them. What wonder that they fill the land with restlessness!

However unfavorable this exhibit of the negroes in respect to labor may
appear, it is quite as good as can be made for the whites. I everywhere
found a condition of affairs in this regard that astounded me. Idleness,
not occupation, seemed the normal state. It is the boast of men and
women alike, that they have ne