Chapter XXII: The Results of Emancipation (2)

"SEC. 12. _And be it further enacted_, That no President,
Vice-President, Trustee, officer, or servant of the Corporation
shall, directly or indirectly, borrow the funds of the
Corporation or its deposits, or in any manner use the same, or
any part thereof, except to pay necessary expenses, under the
direction of the Board of Trustees. All certificates or other
evidences of deposit made by the proper officers shall be as
binding on the Corporation as if they were made under their
common seal. It shall be the duty of the Trustees to regulate the
rate of interest allowed to the depositors, so that they shall
receive, as nearly as may be, a rateable proportion of all the
profits of the Corporation, after deducting all necessary
expenses; _Provided, however_, That the Trustees may allow to
depositors to the amount of five hundred dollars or upward one
per centum less than the amount allowed others; _And provided,
also_, Whenever it shall appear that, after the payment of the
usual interest to depositors, there is in the possession of the
Corporation an excess of profits over the liabilities amounting
to ten per centum upon the deposits, such excess shall be
invested for the security of the depositors in the Corporation;
and thereafter, at each annual examination of the affairs of the
Corporation, any surplus over and above such ten per centum
shall, in addition to the usual interest, be divided rateably
among the depositors, in such manner as the Board of Trustees
shall direct.

"SEC. 13. _And be it further enacted_, That whenever any deposits
shall be made by any minor, the Trustees of the Corporation may,
at their discretion, pay to such depositor such sum as may be due
to him, although no guardian shall have been appointed for such
minor, or the guardian of such minor shall not have authorized
the drawing of the same; and the check, receipt, or acquittance
of such minor shall be as valid as if the same were executed by a
guardian of such minor, or the minor were of full age, if such
deposit was made personally by such minor. And whenever any
deposits shall have been made by married women, the Trustees may
repay the same on their own receipts.

"SEC. 14. _And be it further enacted_, That the Trustees shall
not directly or indirectly receive any payment or emolument for
their services as such, except the President and Vice-President.

"SEC. 15. _And be it further enacted_, That the President,
Vice-President, and subordinate officers and agents of the
Corporation, shall respectively give such security for their
fidelity and good conduct as the Board of Trustees may, from time
to time, require, and the Board shall fix the salaries of such
officers and agents.

"SEC. 16. _And be it further enacted_, That the books of the
Corporation shall, at all times during the hours of business, be
open for inspection and examination to such persons as Congress
shall designate or appoint.

"Approved March 3, 1865."

Eleven of these banks were established in 1865, nine in 1866, three in 1868, one in 1869, and the remainder in 1870, after the charter had been amended as follows:

"AN ACT TO AMEND AN ACT ENTITLED 'AN ACT TO INCORPORATE THE
FREEDMAN'S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY,' APPROVED MARCH THIRD,
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE.

"_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United Stales of America, in Congress assembled_, That the fifth
section of the Act entitled 'An Act to Incorporate the Freedman's
Savings and Trust Company,' approved March third, eighteen
hundred and sixty-five, be, and the same is hereby, amended by
adding thereto at the end thereof the words following: 'and to
the extent of one half in bonds or notes, secured by mortgage on
real estate in double the value of the loan; and the corporation
is also authorized hereby to hold and improve the real estate now
owned by it in the city of Washington, to wit: the west half of
lot number three; all of lots four, five, six, seven, and the
south half of lot number eight, in square number two hundred and
twenty-one, as laid out and recorded in the original plats or
plan of said city: _Provided_, That said corporation shall not
use the principal of any deposits made with it for the purpose of
such improvement.'

"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That Congress shall have
the right to alter or repeal this amendment at any time.

"Approved May 6, 1870."

The company was organized on the 16th of May, 1865, and the trustees made their first report on the 8th of June, 1865. Deposits up to this date were $700, besides $7,956.38 transferred from the Military Savings Bank at Norfolk, Virginia, on the 3d of June. On the 1st of August the first branch office was opened at Washington, D. C., and on the 1st of September it had a balance due its depositors of $843.84.

Other branches were opened during the year at Louisville, Richmond, Nashville, Wilmington, Huntsville, Memphis, Mobile, and Vicksburg. December 14, 1865, the Military Bank at Beaufort, organized October 16, 1865, was, by order of General Saxton, transferred to this company, with its balance of $170,000. At the end of the first year, March 1, 1866, fourteen branch offices had been opened, and the balance due depositors was $199,283.42.

The total deposits made by freedmen in them, from their establishment up to July 1, 1870, was $16,960,336, of which over $2,000,000 still remained on deposit. The total amount of deposits in the Richmond branch up to that date was $318,913, and the balance undrawn $84,537. The average amount deposited by the various depositors was nearly $284. So far as the facts were obtained, it appeared that about seventy per cent. of the money drawn from these banks was invested in real estate and in business.

By the financial statement of the banking company, for August, 1871, it appears that in the thirty-four banks then in operation the deposits made during that month, which was considered "dull," amounted to $882,806.67, and that the total amount to the credit of the depositors was $3,058,232.81. In the Richmond branch, the deposits for that month were $17,790.60, and the total amount due depositors was $123,733.75; all of which was to the credit of Colored people, except $6,929.19. A branch shortly before had been established in Lynchburg, which showed a balance due depositors of $7,382.83.

The following table shows the business of the company for the years 1866-1871:

_Table Showing the Relative Business of the Company for Each Fiscal Year._

For year ending Total amount of Total amount of Balance due
March 1. deposits. drafts. depositors.
--------------- --------------- --------------- -------------
1866 $305,167 00 $105,883 58 $199,283 42
1867 1,624,853 33 1,258,515 00 366,338 33
1868 3,582,378 36 2,944,079 36 638,299 00
1869 7,257,798 63 6,184,333 32 1,073,465 31
1870 12,605,781 95 10,948,775 20 1,657,006 75
1871 19,952,647 36 17,497,111 25 2,455,836 11

For year ending Deposits each Drafts each Gain each
March 1. year. year. year.
--------------- ------------- ------------- ------------
1866 $305,167 00 $105,883 58 $199,283 42
1867 1,319,686 33 1,152,631 42 167,054 91
1868 1,957,525 03 1,685,564 36 271,960 67
1869 3,675,420 27 3,240,253 96 435,166 31
1870 5,347,983 32 4,764,441 88 583,341 44
1871 7,347,165 41 6,548,336 05 798,829 36

The total amount of deposits received from the organization
of the company to October 1, 1871--six years
from the opening of the first branch--was $25,977,435 48
Total drafts during the same period were 22,850,926 47
--------------
Leaving due depositors October 1, 1871 3,126,509 01
The _total assets_ of company on same day
amounted to 3,157,206 17
--------------
The interest paid during this time amounted to 180,565 35

In 1872 the trustees made the following interesting statement:

THE FREEDMAN'S SAVINGS AND TRUST COMPANY.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST, 1872.

Deposits for Drafts for Total amount Total amount Balance due BRANCHES. the month. the month. of Deposits. of Drafts. Depositors. ----------------------- ------------ ---------- ------------- ------------- ----------- Atlanta, Georgia $9,419 68 $11,242 30 $245,200 27 $223,020 17 $22,180 10 Augusta, Georgia 10,771 99 9,217 94 367,653 16 284,406 14 83,247 02 Baltimore, Maryland 29,755 52 18,644 57 1,278,042 32 996,371 98 281,670 34 Beaufort, South Carolina 189,600 74 184,924 40 2,993,873 30 2,944,441 88 49,431 42 Charleston, South Carolina 67,668 83 84,464 53 3,100,641 65 2,795,176 24 305,465 41 Columbus, Mississippi 2,426 15 4,364 34 132,036 46 121,776 67 10,259 79 Columbia, Tennessee 2,552 55 2,086 05 34,088 97 15,738 76 18,350 21 Huntsville, Alabama 7,343 50 10,127 61 416,617 72 364,382 51 52,235 21 Jacksonville, Florida 67,292 09 57,307 54 3,312,424 55 3,234,445 72 77,978 83 Lexington, Kentucky 14,383 85 11,221 13 238,680 22 188,308 76 50,371 46 Little Rock, Arkansas 7,871 27 9,506 37 172,392 10 154,914 42 17,477 68 Louisville, Kentucky 18,311 01 17,535 74 1,057,587 71 914,504 61 143,083 10 Lynchburg, Virginia 3,104 48 1,242 56 36,880 98 18,354 87 18,526 11 Macon, Georgia 6,808 98 7,061 52 197,050 01 156,308 75 40,741 26 Memphis, Tennessee 20,045 40 27,197 06 970,096 09 840,218 91 129,877 18 Mobile, Alabama 11,136 05 18,645 62 1,039,097 05 933,424 30 105,672 75 Montgomery, Alabama 8,522 90 8,679 60 238,106 08 213,861 71 24,244 37 Natchez, Mississippi 25,548 53 15,005 17 649,256 70 612,985 74 36,270 96 Nashville, Tennessee 15,731 46 17,098 58 739,691 88 625,166 40 114,525 48 New Berne, North Carolina 38,113 83 37,775 73 1,057,688 32 1,001,645 74 56,042 58 New Orleans, Louisiana 193,145 48 207,878 53 2,393,584 08 2,171,056 95 222,527 13 New York, New York 133,209 58 74,461 61 1,673,249 36 1,227,449 57 445,799 79 Norfolk, Virginia 16,771 88 17,757 38 1,048,762 05 916,047 59 132,714 46 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 11,451 12 9,887 49 357,924 89 278,641 10 79,283 79 Raleigh, North Carolina 5,663 28 4,660 18 231,685 82 202,032 44 29,653 38 Richmond, Virginia 64,112 51 53,900 72 1,082,152 71 912,933 45 169,219 26 Savannah, Georgia 30,951 23 27,066 33 1,031,173 38 893,321 30 137,852 02 Shreveport, Louisiana 20,688 72 21,105 59 299,428 39 264,707 78 34,720 61 St. Louis, Missouri 26,323 93 20,599 02 615,876 74 526,490 86 89,385 88 Tallahassee, Florida 4,589 45 4,526 75 361,614 57 329,618 33 31,996 24 Vicksburg, Mississippi 61,691 73 60,068 28 2,962,235 58 2,823,700 87 138,534 71 Washington, Dist. Colum'a 323,555 79 296,321 26 7,438,918 17 6,406,092 39 1,032,825 78 Wilmington, N'th Carolina 10,714 10 12,632 65 457,360 75 407,512 51 49,848 24 Alexandria, Virginia 1,929 91 685 80 14,091 77 1,626 35 12,465 42 $1,461,207 52 $1,364,899 95 $38,245,163 80 $34,000,685 77 $4,244,478 03

Total amount of deposits for the month $1,461,207 56 Total amount of drafts for the month 1,364,899 95 ------------- Gain for the month 96,307 61 =============

Total amount of deposits $38,245,163 80 Total amount of drafts 34,000,685,77 -------------- Total amount due depositors $4,244,478 03 ==============

This first experiment of the new citizen in saving his funds was working admirably. Each report was more cheering than the preceding one. The deposits were generally made by day laborers, house servants, farmers, mechanics, and washerwomen. Two facts were established, viz.: that the Negroes of the South were working; and that they were saving their earnings. Northern as well as Southern whites were agreeably surprised.

But bad management doomed the institution to irreparable ruin. The charter was violated in the establishment of branch banks; "persons who were never held in bondage and their descendants" were allowed to deposit funds in the bank; money was loaned upon valueless securities and meaningless collaterals, and in the fall of 1873, having been kept open for a long time on money borrowed on collateral securities belonging to its customers, the bank failed!

During the brief period of its existence about $57,000,000 had been deposited. The liabilities of the institution at the time of the failure, as corrected to date, were $3,037,483, of which $73,774.34 were special deposits and preferred claims. The number of open accounts at the time of the failure were 62,000. The _nominal_ assets at the time of the failure were $2,693,093.20. And in the almost interminable list of over-drafts amounting to $55,567.63, there appeared but one solitary surety!

On the 20th of June, 1874, Congress passed an act permitting the very men who had destroyed the bank to nominate three Commissioners, who, upon the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, should wind up the affairs of this insolvent institution. Section 7 of the Act reads as follows:

"SEC. 7. That whenever it shall be deemed advisable by the
trustees of said corporation to close up its entire business,
then they shall select three competent men, not connected with
the previous management of the institution and approved by the
Secretary of the Treasury, to be known and styled commissioners,
whose duty it shall be to take charge of all the property and
effects of said Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, close up
the principal and subordinate branches, collect from the branches
all the deposits they have on hand, and proceed to collect all
sums due said company, and dispose of all the property owned by
said company, as speedily as the interests of the corporation
require, and to distribute the proceeds among the creditors pro
rata, according to their respective amounts; they shall make a
pro rata dividend whenever they have funds enough to pay twenty
per centum of the claims of depositors. Said commissioners,
before they proceed to act, shall execute a joint bond to the
United States, with good sureties, in the penal sum of one
hundred thousand dollars, conditioned for the faithful discharge
of their duties as commissioners aforesaid, and shall take an
oath to faithfully and honestly perform their duties as such,
which bonds shall be executed in presence of the Secretary of the
Treasury, be approved by him, and by him safely kept; and
whenever said trustees shall file with the Secretary of the
Treasury a certified copy of the order appointing said
commissioners, and they shall have executed the bonds and taken
the oath aforesaid, then said commissioners shall be invested
with the legal title to all of said property of said company, for
the purposes of this act, and shall have full power and authority
to sell the same, and make deeds of conveyance to any and all of
the real estate sold by them to the purchasers. Said
commissioners may employ such agents as are necessary to assist
them in closing up said company, and pay them a reasonable
compensation for their services out of the funds of said company;
and the said commissioners shall retain out of said funds a
reasonable compensation for their trouble, to be fixed by the
Secretary of the Treasury and the Comptroller of the Currency,
and not exceeding three thousand dollars each per annum. Said
commissioners shall deposit all sums collected by them in the
Treasury of the United States until they make a pro rata
distribution of the same."

There are several legal questions that history would like to ask. 1. Did not the trustees of the Freedman's Savings Bank and Trust Company violate their charter in establishing branch banks? 2. Were not the trustees personally liable for receiving deposits from persons who were neither "heretofore held in slavery" nor the descendants of such persons? 3. Were not persons "heretofore held in slavery" and "their descendants" preferred creditors? 4. Had Congress the authority to go outside of the Federal bankruptcy laws and create such special machinery for the settlement of a collapsed bank? This matter may come before Congress in a new shape some time in the future.

The three commissioners, at a salary of $3,000 per annum, were charged with the settlement of the affairs of the bank. They were Jno. A. J. Creswell, Robert Purvis, and R. H. T. Leipold. Mr. Creswell was retained by the United States before the Alabama Claims Commission at a salary of $10,000 per annum; while Mr. Leipold was a lawyer with considerable practice. But neither one of these gentlemen ever entered a court on behalf of the company. In a little more than five years they used up out of the assets of the company, $40,000 for their salaries; paid for salaries to agents, $64,000, and $31,000 for attorneys' fees, aggregating $135,000--nearly one half of the amount distributed among depositors for the same length of time.

The more the commissioners examined, the greater the liabilities of the company grew. On the 1st of October, 1875, a dividend of 20 per cent. was declared; on the 1st of February, 1878, a dividend of 10 per cent. was declared; on the 21st of August, 1880, they declared another dividend of 10 per cent.; and on the 14th of April, 1881, a circular was sent out as a crumb of comfort to the anxious, defrauded, and outraged depositors. It is not enough for history to pronounce the failure of this bank an irreparable calamity to the Colored people of the South; it should be branded as a _crime_! There was no more necessity for the failure of this bank than for the failure of the United States Treasury. Its management was criminal; and Congress should yet seek out and punish the guilty; and the depositors should be indemnified out of the United States Treasury. Justice and equity demand it.

The failure of the Freedman's Bank worked great mischief among the Colored people in the South. But hardy, persistent, earnest, and hopeful, they turned again to the work of making and saving money. They have been more prudent than their circumstances, in some instances, would seem to warrant. In Georgia the Colored people have made wonderful progress in business matters.

Amount of
Money and Household
No. of Solvent and
Acres of Value of City or Town Debts of Kitchen
Polls. Land. Land. Property. all Kinds. Furniture.
------- ------- ---------- ------------ ---------- ----------
88,522 541,199 $1,348,758 $1,094,435 $73,253 $448,713

Value of all
other Property
Horses, Plantation not before Aggregate Total Amount
Mules, Hogs, and Enumerated Value of of Tax Assessed
Sheep, Mechanical except Whole on Polls
and Cattle. Tools. Annual Crops, Property. and Property.
Provisions, etc.
----------- ---------- ---------------- ---------- ---------------
$1,704,230 $143,258 $369,751 $5,182,398 $106,660.39

Increase in number of acres since return of 1878 39,309
Increase in wealth since return of 1878 $57,523

In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and in Maryland, Colored men have possessed themselves of excellent farms and moderate fortunes. In Baltimore a company of Colored men own a ship dock, and transact a large business. Some of the largest orange plantations in Florida are owned by Colored men. On most of the plantations, and in many of the large towns and cities Colored mechanics are quite numerous. The Montgomeries who own the plantation, once the property of Jefferson Davis, extending for miles along the Mississippi, are probably the best business men in the South. In Louisiana, P. P. Deslonde, A. Dubuclet, Hon. T. T. Allain, and State Senator Young are men who, although taking a lively interest in politics, have accumulated property and saved it.

There is nothing vicious in the character of the Southern Negro. He is gentle, affectionate, and faithful. If it has appeared, through false figures, that he is a criminal, there is room for satisfactory explanation. In 1870, out of a population, of persons of color, in all the States and Territories, of 4,880,009, there were only 9,400 who were receiving aid on the 1st of June, 1870; and only 8,056 in all the prisons of America. Nine tenths of these were South, and could neither read nor write.

During the Rebellion, when every white male from fifteen to seventy was out fighting to sustain the Confederacy--when the Southern Government was robbing the cradle and the grave for soldiers--the wives and children of the Confederates were committed to the care and keeping of their slaves. And what is the verdict of history? That these women were outraged and their children brained? No! But that during all those years of painful anxiety, of hope and fear, of fiery trial and severe privation, those faithful Negroes toiled, not only to support the wives and children of the men who were fighting to make slavery national and perpetual, but fed the entire rebel army, and never laid the weight of a finger upon the head of any of the women or children entrusted to their care! To this virtue of fidelity to their worst enemies they added still another, loyalty to the Union flag and escaping Union soldiers. All night long they would direct the lonely, famishing, fainting, and almost delirious Union soldier in a safe way, and then when the night and morning met they would point their pilgrim friends to the North Star, hide them and feed them during the day, and then return to the plantation to care for the loved ones of the men who starved Union soldiers and hunted them down with bloodhounds! This is the brightest gem that history can place upon the brow of the Negro; and in conferring it there is no one found to object.

Since the war the crime among Colored people is to be accounted for upon two grounds, viz.: ignorance, and a combination of circumstances over which they had no control. It was one thing for the Negro to understand the cruel laws of slavery, but when he found himself a freeman he was not able to know what was an infraction of the law. They did not know what in law constituted a _tort_, or a civil action from a sled. The violent passions pampered in slavery, the destruction of the home, the promiscuous mingling of the sexes, a conscience enfeebled by disuse, made them easy transgressors. The Negro is not a criminal generically; he is an accidental criminal. The judiciary and juries of the South are responsible for the alarming prison statistics which stand against the Negro. It takes generations for men to overcome their prejudices. With a white judge and a white jury a Negro is guilty the moment he makes his appearance in court. It is seldom that a Negro can get judgment against a white person under the most favorable circumstances. The Negroes who appear in courts are of the poorer and more ignorant class. They have no funds with which to employ counsel, and have but few intelligent lawyers to come to their rescue. In cases of theft, especially of poultry, pigs, sheep, fruit, etc., it is next to impossible to convince a white judge or jury that the defendant is not guilty. They reason that because the half-fed, overworked slave appropriated articles of food, as a freeman the Negro was not changed. They ascribed a general habit, growing out of trying circumstances, to the Negro as a slave that he soon learned to regard as morally wrong when a freeman.

But the most effective agency in filling Southern prisons with Negroes has been, and is, the chain-gang system--the farming out of convict labor. Just as great railway, oil, and telegraph companies in the North have been capable of controlling legislation, so the corporations at the South which take the prisoners of the State off of the hands of the Government, and then speculate upon the labor of the prisoners, are able to control both court and jury. It has been the practice, and is now, in some of the Southern States, to pronounce long sentences upon able-bodied young Colored men, whose offences, in a Northern court, could not be visited with more than a few months' confinement and a trifling fine. The object in giving Negro men a long term of years, is to make sure the tenure of the soulless corporations upon the convicts whose unhappy lot it is to fall into their iron grasp. In some of the Southern States a strong and healthy Negro convict brings thirty-seven cents a day to the State, while he earns a dollar for the corporations above his expenses. The convicts are cruelly treated--especially in Georgia and Kentucky;--their food is poor, their quarters miserable, and their morals next to the brute creation. In many of these camps men and women are compelled to sleep in the same bunks together, with chains upon their limbs, in a promiscuous manner too sickening and disgusting to mention. When a prisoner escapes he is hunted down by fiery dogs and cruel guards; and often the poor prisoner is torn to pieces by the dogs or beaten to death by the guards. No system of slavery was ever equal in its cruel and dehumanizing details to this convict system, which, taking advantage of race prejudice on the one hand and race ignorance on the other, with cupidity and avarice as its chief characteristics, has done more to curse the South than all things else since the war.

It was predicted by persons hostile to the rights and citizenship of the Negro, that a condition of freedom would not be in harmony with his character; that it would destroy him, and that he would destroy the country and party which tried to make him agree to a state of independent life; that having been used to the "kind treatment"(?) of his master he would find himself unequal to the responsibilities of freedom; and that his migratory disposition would lead him into a climate too cold for him, where he would be welcomed to an inhospitable grave.

It is true that a great many Negroes died during the first years of their new life. The joy of emancipation and the excitement that disturbed business swept the Negroes into the large cities. Like the shepherds who left their flocks on the plains and went into Bethlehem to see the promised redemption, these people sought the centres of excitement. The large cities were overrun with them. The demand for unskilled labor was not great. From mere spectators they became idlers, helpless and offensive to industrious society. Ignorant of sanitary laws, imprudent in their daily living, changing from the pure air and plain diet of farm life to the poisonous atmosphere and rich, fateful food of the city, many fell victims to the sudden change from bondage to freedom, from darkness to light, and from the fleshpots, garlic, and onions of their Egyptian bondage to the milk and honey of the Canaan of their deliverance.

But this was in accordance with an immutable law of nature. Every year a large number of birds perish in an attempt to change their home; every spring-time many flowers die at their birth. The law of the survival of the fittest is impartial and inexorable. The Creator said centuries ago "the soul that sinneth shall surely die," and the law has remained until the present time. Those who sinned ignorantly or knowingly died the death; but those who obeyed the laws of health, of man, and of God, lived to be useful members of society.

But this was the exception to the rule. The Negro race in America is not dying out. The charge is false. The wish was father to the thought, while no doubt many honest people have been misled by false figures. Nearly all white communities at the South had more than enough of physicians; and science and culture were summoned to the aid of the white mother in the hour of childbirth. The record of births was preserved with pride and official accuracy; and thus there was a record upon which to calculate the increase. But, on the contary, among the Negroes there were no physicians and no record of births. The venerable system of midwifery prevailed. In burying their dead, however, this people were compelled to obtain a burial permit from the Board of Health. Thus the statistics were all on one side--all deaths and no births. Looking at these statistics it did seem that the race was dying out. But the Government steps in and takes the census every decade, and, thereby, the world is enabled, upon reliable figures, to estimate the increase or decrease of the Colored race. The subjoined table exhibits the increase of the Colored people for nine decades.

Colored gain
Year. Colored. per cent.
----- --------- ------------
1st census. 1790 757,208
2d " 1800 1,002,037 32.3 1st decade.
3d " 1810 1,377,808 37.5 2d "
4th " 1820 1,771,656 28.6 3d "
5th " 1830 2,328,642 31.5 4th "
6th " 1840 2,873,648 23.4 5th "
7th " 1850 3,638,808 26.6 6th "
8th " 1860 4,441,830 22.1 7th "
9th " 1870 4,880,009 9.9[122] 8th "
10th " 1880 6,580,793 34.8 9th "

So here is a remarkable fact, that from 757,208 in 1790 the Negro race has grown to be 6,580,793 in 1880! The theory that the race was dying out under the influences of civilization at a greater ratio than under the annihilating influences of slavery was at war with common-sense and the efficient laws of Christian society. Emancipation has taken the mother from field-work to house-work. The slave hut has been supplanted by a pleasant house; the mud floor is done away with; and now, with carpets on the floor, pictures on the wall, a better quality of food properly prepared, the influence of books and papers, and the blessings of a preached Gospel, the Negro mother is more prolific, and the mortality of her children reduced to a minimum. The Negro is not dying out. On the contrary he has shown the greatest recuperative powers, and against the white population of the United States as it stands to-day--if it were not fed by European immigrants,--within the next hundred years the Negroes would outnumber the whites 12,000,000! Or at an increase of 33-1/3 per cent. the Negro population in 1980 would be 117,000,000! providing the ratio of increase continues the same between the races.

And in addition to the fact that the Negro, like the Irishman, is prolific, is able to reproduce his species, it should be recorded that the Negro intellect is growing and expanding at a wonderful rate. The children of ten and twelve years of age are more apt to-day than those of the same age ten years ago. And the children of the next generation will have no superiors in any of the schools of the country.

FOOTNOTES:

[117] For an account of this problem, see the Appendix to this volume.

[118] See the annual reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Virginia. There were more than 18,234 Colored children in the schools of this State in 1870.

[119] Annual Report of the Hon. W. H. Ruffner, for 1874.

[120] For an account of the John F. Slater Bequest of $1,000.000 for the education of the freedmen, see the Appendix to this volume.

[121] See report of the Commissioner.

[122] There is no disguising the fact that the ninth census was incorrect. No doubt it was the worst we have ever had.