124 EEMARK8 ON THE GOVERNMENT TAX. 
our hope, to you we appeal. Are you willing to utterly 
crusli and ruin a people by unjust and unconstitutional 
legislation, who have been robbed and plundered of nearly 
all they possess ? Could you see our once well-cultivated 
farms now changed into a gloomy, desolated waste ; our 
once well-stocked plantations, now almost entirely destitute 
of horses, mules, cattle, hogs, sheep, &c., and behold the 
lonely chimneys and charred remains of our once smiling 
cottages and stately mansions, sad mementoes of the past 
and reminiscences of happier days; could you see the 
gray-haired sires and matrons bending under the weight 
of years, reduced to poverty by the ruthless hand and 
torch of the invader, toiling from morn to eve to sustain 
the helpless widows and orphans of their murdered sons ; 
could you see our whole people struggling as it were for 
life against the rolling surges of adversity, surely you 
would frown upon all attempts to further injure them. 
And as philanthropists and Christians, will you not mingle 
your sympathies with ours for the poor negro, who is now 
just entering on a new and untried scene of his being, and 
who needs, greatly needs the fostering care instead of the 
crashing power of the Government? How is it possible 
that he can live and support his family at the present 
enormous price of clothing and provisions on one-third or 
one-half of the proceeds of his labor, pay his medical ac- 
counts, his State and county taxes, necessary contingent 
expenses, and ten, perhaps thirty per cent, of the value of 
his crop to the Federal Government, and have any thing 
left ? Is it for the interest of the country, either North or 
South, to keep this unfortunate race in poverty, and fill the 
country with pauperism and crime ? Surely not. And yet 
the tendency of this iniquitous and unwise tax law is to 
produce that result. 
