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326 THE NATIONAL FREEDMAN. faithless found. Nor do I forget that when, on his way from the Capital to his home, insulted though he was at many railway stations, he never faltered in his devotion to the Union, nor can I forget his speech, when Military Governor of Tennessee, to a mass meeting of the colored men at Nashville, in which he declaired that all men should have a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life, and let him succeed who has the most merit. You all remember his speech to the colored regiment of the District of Columbia, where he repudiated that stereotyped declaration that this "is a white man's country alone," and insisted that it was theirs also. You remember also his remark to the South Carolina delegation, that the only right system was to protect "all men, both white and black," and that if they got general principles right, details and collaterals would follow. We all remember, too, his earnest dispatches to these Southern Conventions in setling Richmond elections, when a disloyal Mayor and Common Council were chosen, and that he has signed the death-warrant of every one who has been convicted of conspiracy. Miscellaneous. Follow, with reverent steps, the great example Of Him whose holy work was doing good; So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Thus shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fires of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace. Special Appeal. HEADQUARTERS ASSIST. COM. BUREAU R.,F., AND A. L., STATE OF VIRGINIA. RICHMOND, VA., November 1, 1865. MR. FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW. Dear Sir: - I am directed by Col. O. Brown, Assistant Commissioner, to call your attention, and through you the attention of all whom your charitable Association represents, to the destitute condition of large numbers of freedmen in this State. Already there is much suffering for the want of comfortable clothing, and this distress will be greatly increased by the approach of cold weather. The destitute are chiefly found among dependent women and children, the sick, aged, and infirm. Large numbers, who are willing and able to labor, find no employment; at the same time wages are so small and rents so high, that very little of their earnings is left for food, and nothing for clothing. No adequate appropriations have been made to the Bureau by the Government to meet this emergency, and the only resource left is to appeal to the Christian philanthropy of the North. Large amounts of new and secondhand clothing for women and children (the men can be provided for by the Bureau) also cotton and woolen fabrics, in the web or cut out ready to be made up, are immediately needed. No other good work should be allowed to supersede this. Very respectfully, R. M. MANLY, Acting Superintendent Freedmen's Schools. -- Extracts of a letter bearing date October 31st, from M. H. A. EVANS General Superintendent of Freedmen on John and Wadmalaw Islands, S. C. In the name and behalf of the freedmen of this colony, I wish to acknowledge your generous response to the call of our suffering, and most heartily thank you for the liberal donations that have alleviated so many pangs. I left New York October 1st, in the good old steamship McClellan, Captain Davis, with thirty cases, the equivalent of about fifty barrels of clothing, for the freedmen, under my charge, furnished by the N. F. R. Association, of New York. Four days we spent issuing clothing; Misses Sharp and Schofield kindly relieving us of the female portion, plunging into old boxes and working more like stevedores than anything else. All honor to them! Our clothing is all gone, and only about one-fourth of the refugees are clad; the rest are destitute and suffering, thronging the office daily, praying for something to cover their nakedness and shelter them from the cold. How long they must endure their present condition remains for the benevolent societies and philanthropic individuals at the North to say. May all receive as they give! Boots and shoes sent for the distribution should be of the largest kind; it is very difficult to find fits for the men. The teachers have gone energetically to work, having a school numbering about eighty pupils; also, a Sabbath school of over one hundred. -- MAINE.--We are authorized by D. S. King to state, that all teachers for the freedmen, sent THE NATIONAL FREEDMAN. 327 by any Association, can have free passage and board by steamboat from Portland to New York or Boston, and return. Application may be made to Capt. Cyrus Sturdevant, of Portland, through whose kind agency this favor has been granted. -- The Condition of the South and its Attitude to the A. F. A. C. AMERICAN FREEMDEN'S AID COMMISSION, EASTERN DEPARTMENT, 69 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. How does the South regard us? What will she do to aid us?-are questions of the greatest interest to every active friend of the freedmen. Before we can appreciate the Southern estimate of our work, we must consider the state of Southern society; the South, as far as her male population, is the disbanded remains of a defeated army; and her women have scarcely ceased nursing their wounded, and serving the abortive Confederacy with their needles and tongues. The effects of an enthusiasm made devotion by unparalleled sufferings of a tenaciously cherished hope suddenly blasted, and of four years' experience of "Federals" with rifles and torches, can not be counteracted in a day. Bereavement is universal. It seemed to me that all the females of every congregation with whom I worshiped were in mourning. All the sons of many families have been slain, and almost everybody has a crippled relation. A wounded spirit--for Southern pride has been pierced to the core--and a desolate heart, are hard to bear. Poverty is the rule, and plenty the exception. The capital of the people has sunk with the Confederacy. Its bonds and notes are not so valuable as old newspapers. WHY DESOLATION REIGNS. A minister for whom I preached had over a hundred thousand dollars' worth of this historical trash in one of his drawers. Owing to a want of confidence between the planters and the negroes, and the habits which both acquired under slavery, the lands are not half cultivated, and large tracts are for sale at nominal prices. In many places, especially along the line of Sherman's march, the extremest destitution prevails. I saw in the neighborhood of Atlanta many white people living in unplastered log huts, some crawling under trees, and a large family in an old freight car. Many of my own friends, who were rolling in luxury before the war, have no carpets on their floors, scarcely bedding enough to keep them warm; and, as one of them forcibly remarked, are subsisting on less than they used to throw away. Defeat, bereavement, and indigence are sad company. We say that they brought all this upon themselves, but as far as this is true it makes their lot so much the harder to bear. This is the bitterest wormwood in their cup. We should remember also the antagonism that always existed between the poor whites and the slaves; and how the slaveholders from generation to generation have been educated to regard their chattels. Moreover, we should not overlook the darker phases of emancipation. The freed people never believed in their freedom until they had packed up their rags, and swarmed from the old plantation into the adjacent villages, towns, and cities. To return them under contract to the deserted fields is the most arduous work of the Bureau. But in the mean while, starvation, disease, and immorality, are fearfully prevalent. PATIENCE AND FORBEARANCE NEEDED. All these things,--the past, present, and future of the South, the last as it appears to most of the Southerners,--should be considered in order to account for the hatred of everything Northern, which burns in many, and the sullen indifference perhaps of more; to apologize for the rather cold aspect of quite a number to the necessity and philanthropy of our enterprise, and to enhance the godspeed you of the few. It is very easy for us to philosophize, victorious as we are, and especially if our houses are standing, our children comfortable and at school, the balances on the right side, and only a fourth cousin or so, among the missing. It is not surprising that we who have always believed slavery wrong, and the negro susceptible of great improvement, should be jubilant at emancipation. But we should not be impatient with those who are inevitably affected by such different conditions. Interest, custom, and Southern theology, combined to foster slavery; all the desolations of a gigantic war waged among their homesteads, conspire to depress and embitter them, and light comes from the future but to few. Most of them see nothing but the dark side of this progressing revolution, and darkness ahead. We look on the bright side--some of us on only this--and on more glorious brightness dawning. Lastly, and by no means least, they are suspicious of Yankees; and I must confess that their experience of some poor specimens,
