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The people of this State boast that, when they get Freedman affairs in their own hands, the negroes, to use their own classic expression, "will catch hell." They steadily refuse to sell or lease lands to black men. Colored mechanics of this city, who have made several thousand dollars during the last two years, find it impossible to buy even land enough to put up a house, yet white men can purchase any amount. The whites know that if the negro is not allowed to acquire property or become a landholder, he must return to plantation-labors and work for wages that will barely support himself and family; and they feel this kind of slavery to be better than none at all. People who will do these things, after such a war as we have had, while federal bayonets are yet around them are not to be entrusted with the education and development of a race of slaves just liberated. I have made this letter longer than it should have been, and may have taxed your patience; yet, I do