16 



than a beast, and has built large suburbs of good houses in every 

 city, such as I have seen on this journey and my last one through the 

 Atlantic States spring before last. Many of 'these houses contain an 

 abundance of good furniture that he doesn't value a rap, but bunks 

 on the floor. I learn that he breaks tools worse than he ever did, and 

 makes larger and more varied crops than ever before ; that he is 

 lapsing into a barbarism in which he astonishes every one by the 

 rapiditj* with which he learns to read ; and, having turned altogether 

 to the bad, is bringing up his children so that, if the poor whites do 

 not take care, there will be man}' counties, as there are now a few, in 

 which there are more illiterate whites than there are blacks in ratio to 

 numbers'; that he makes no progress in the accumulation of propert} r , 

 and has come into the possession of a great deal of land, especially 

 in Georgia. He is also charged with the conduct of many large farms 

 or plantations, and is in an indispensable factor in the future of your 

 industry, who ought to be removed to Africa by the Colonization 

 Society. Since I wrote this address, I have received a copy of an 

 address given by an Episcopal clergyman, I believe of Vicksburg, in 

 which it is held that the Colonization Society ought to be maintained 

 to deport the colored population* to Africa, because the negro has 

 shown such an unexpected capacitj 7 for education that he is becoming 

 instructed to a degree be3'ond any position that he can attain in this 

 country, and that he therefore ought to go to Africa where he may 

 have a fair chance. [Laughter and applause.] 



Such, gentlemen, is the kind of testimony that may be had. You 

 don't pay your money, but }'ou do take your choice. My own obser- 

 vations tell me that the progress of the colored people of the Atlantic 

 States (I have never been be}*ond them) is one of the marvels of 

 economic history, pregnant with vast influence in the future. 



I must refer to one other subject. 



We have also been told that the Northern carpet-baggers have 

 entered your domains, and, united with the Southern scalawag, in- 

 fested your Legislatures, and by the power of the negro vote have bur- 

 dened many of the cotton States with enormous debts. 



Gentlemen, I have reason to believe that there is not a single State, 

 or scarcely one, in which this burden of debt was imposed by the so- 

 called carpet-bag Legislatures, in which the majority of the white men 

 in such Legislature did not consist of Southern men, Southern born 

 and Southern bred. I cannot prove this ; but if you desire good will 

 and order, if you want Northern men and Northern methods, you 

 need that the truth or falsehood of the statements on which this 

 belief is founded shall be determined, and 3-011 need also to welcome, 

 and not to repel by social ostracism, the true men and women from 

 the North who have or shall come here to aid you in leading this 

 colored race out of bondage into liberty and life. 



It is a far easier task than we have in Massachusetts, where nearly 

 one-fourth of our population is foreign-born, and consists of those 

 who have come to us subject to deeper prejudices and a kind of igno- 

 rance more difficult to overcome than any thing you have to meet in 

 dealing with these people. 



