Viewing page 96 of 234

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

8

in that important and remote division one of unexceptionable reliabily should be placed, and think that the interests of the Bureau and of freedmen would be better guarded should Mr F.A. Morey Agent for Warwick be transferred to that sub district. 

The general condition of freedmen is a many sided subject, quite as large for a sub-district as for a state, and inviting if not invoking an analysis of their life, character and relations. 

I have endeavored to sound the depths of their condition and capacity, to learn the effect of one upon the other. The wretchedness of the former seems to have paralyzed the activity of the latter, so that the chief discouragement in labor for them is not the actual depth and extent of suffering or ignorance, but their contentment in hovels and rags; (their physical aspirations stopping at a shelter and a sufficiency of bread and meat) their lack of perception of, or ambition for a higher plane of life. Their mental craving is generally satisfied with a knowledge of the rudiments of learning. This of the present generation which, through slavery, is stagnant; the spring of all fine action and enthusiasm

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-10-07 14:18:42