40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



negro mind, incomprehensible ; nevertheless, it gradually permeated 

 his brain that, should the Federal arms prevail, he would be free. But 

 would the North prevail ? Every man in the circle of his acquaintance 

 in whom had heretofore resided authority hooted at the idea ; the 

 possibility of the South being conquered was openly scouted, and the 

 effect of this on the negro's intelligence was to warn him to submission. 

 Here and there, one more adventurous than the rest ran away and hid 

 himself behind the Federal lines, but ninety-nine out of a hundred not 

 only remained in bondage, but openly ridiculed the idea of their pre- 

 ferring to be free : the old farm and the old master were good enough 

 ^or them. Of these a small percentage were sincere, as was proved by 

 their remaining at home and serving their former owners after the 

 necessity for so doing had ceased, just as if no edict had been issued ; 

 but in time the last one deserted, even the octogenarians, who set up 

 their separate establishments, when they could, with a parting declara- 

 tion to their old masters that so long as they were able to support 

 themselves they would do so, but after that they proposed to return 

 and be maintained as were the aged in times of slavery. 



To the unreflecting white man it seemed as if chaos had come 

 again ; nothing like this had ever before come under the limited range 

 of his reading or experience. To the student it was but a repetition 

 of history ; to him, beyond the loss of so much personal property, and 

 the delay in the readjustment of social laws, no great cataclysm had 

 occurred or was to be apprehended. Before emancipation, the negro 

 had to work or be lashed ; now, he has to work or to starve. Be- 

 fore the war, the owner was obligated to furnish the slave with provis- 

 ions and clothing, to pay his doctor's bills when sick, to maintain him 

 in idleness when superannuated, to bury him when dead. Under the 

 new regime the freedman must do all these things and make these pro- 

 visions for himself. The intelligent Southern man was prepared to 

 pocket his losses and to go to work under the new order of affairs, but 

 was met at the very beginning with obstacles. The poor emancipated 

 slave had an idea that liberty meant license : all his life he had seen 

 free white people living a life of, what appeared to him, perfect idle- 

 ness, and his thought was to reach that blissful condition : he was 

 willing to labor only sufficiently to supply himself with meat and 

 clothes, and it really appeared that the South, instead of selling, as it 

 now does, the produce of a single crop to the value of over three hun- 

 dred million dollars, would sink into a semi-barbarous condition, with 

 a population (all the enterprising ones having removed) satisfied with 

 just enough to prevent absolute want. And thus it might have been 

 but for the vhn and determination of the Anglo-Saxon people, who 

 foresaw that, if but small crops were made, large prices would be 

 obtained. Their example has told among the blacks, especially the 

 men ; the women have yet to learn ; the example of white ladies, who 

 lived luxuriously before the war, now doing a great part of their own 



