88 LETTER FKOM TENNESSEE. 



ing teachers, as though it were to be thrown into the sea. The 

 noblest, pl^rest, most intelligent women of New England, who have 

 come clown here to teach Black children, are shunned and banned 

 by the aristocracy as though they were camp-followers of Sherman's 

 army, and, being thus doomed to associate only with Blacks and 

 live with them, are actually charged with this as a betrayal of low 

 tastes, when it was the dictate of stern necessity. I apprehend 

 that the land-owners will in time be impelled by their hate of 

 " carpet-baggers " to change their course, and seek a cordial under- 

 standing with the Blacks ; but they are not yet in the mood; and 

 the longer they hold off the mox-e diificull the task will prove, 



H. G. 



THE CONDITION OF THE WHITES. 



[EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE OP THE TRIBUNE.] 



Memphis, Tenn., June 3. — " Are you not satisfied that the South 

 has no desire that Slavery be reestablished?" I have often been 

 asked. I answer, I am entirely confident that no considerable 

 number of the Southern people either expect or pui'pose to reenslave 

 their former chattels. They no more expect that than the faded 

 dandy of fifty full years expects to awake to-morrow morning radiant 

 in the pink-and-white bloom of one-and-twenty — no more than the 

 toper, who has broken his jug and seen the thirsty sand swallow the 

 last drop of its precious contents, expects to get drunk to-morrow 

 on that squandered liquor. None know better than the great body 

 of the Southern Whites that the reenslavemeut of the Freedmenisa 

 moral impossibility. 



But, if you mean to ask, "Would the ex-slaveholders choose to 

 have their former slaves restored to them as chattels, if they could f " 

 I answer that I am very thankful that the temptation is mercifully 

 withheld. Wise and thoughtful men there are among them who 

 sincerely, profoundly rejoice that American Slavery is dead be- 

 yond the hope of resui'rection ; but these are not the majority. I 

 am confident that two-thirds of the men, with nine-tenths of the 

 women, who formerly composed the slaveholding caste, would this 

 day give half their houses and lands to have their slaves back again, 

 just as they j)ossessed them in 1860. They sigh for the good old 



