What shall be thought of the officer who, finding a fine law library, straightway packed it up and sent it to his office in the North?
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
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The officer could only offer the broken “Southron” a pair of mules and an army wagon; and this shabby outfit, which four years ago he would not have permitted his body servant to use, he gratefully accepted for his wife and daughter!
They do not wish to trust their old masters on the plantations; and, without any definite purpose or plan, they have a blind, but touching instinct, that wherever the flag is floating it is a good place for friendless negroes to go.
I tell you, sah” said a very intelligent negro, who had been reciting the present troubles of his people, “we ain’t noways safe, ‘long as dem people makes de laws we’s got to be governed by.
The war, according to these negroes, had, in some respects, made slavery harder for them than before.
In some cases the negroes, understanding that they are freed, have refused to work without a contract for wages.
But the town negroes, especially those of the League, say they have but little faith that the contracts will be kept.
One, embracing, I think, a majority of the people, is thoroughly cowed by the crushing defeat, has the profoundest respect for the power that has whipped them so badly, and, under the belief of its necessity, will submit to anything the…
A smaller class are Union men, if they can have the Union their way—if the negroes can be kept under, and themselves put foremost.
And another class are violent and malignant Rebels, enraged at their defeat, and hardly yet willing to submit to the inevitable.
This, and the disorganization of the labor system, have naturally left thousands of families through the State utterly destitute.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.