Viewing page 51 of 243

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

4

and of the first duties of citizenship, without any provision for the future wants of themselves and families, and entertaining many false and extravagant notions in respect to the intentions of the Government towards them.

The citizens generally afforded us assistance in meeting these difficulties.  Stripped to a great extent, of ready resources, by the operation of the war, they were unable to allow these people their just dues, much less any charitable assistance.  In some sections of the state, public meetings had been held, and the citizens had entered into covenant not to pay more than five dollars per month to able-bodied men, not to rent lands to the Freedmen, nor to give employment to any, without a certificate from their former owners.  Many of the citizens, under the control of tradition, habit and education, only sullenly acquiesced in the freedom of their former slaves.  They regarded the colored population as necessarily and appropriately servile, and unfit for freedom and simulated by the feeling that the late slaves were, in some way, responsible for the failure of their