Viewing page 34 of 258

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The blacks will always be a dishonest set if these people do not do something to stop this general wholesale deception.

In regard to schools there is a class of whites who are in favor of schools, "if they are taught in the right way." They do not like Northern teachers to be introduced. Some say that the north had better send teachers to teach the white instead many of the black. But there is a strong current among many of the first class in favor of these schools; these so disposed are men above the general mass, and although they do not wish to make themselves unpopular at this present crisis, still I think they mean well and eventually will, should they persist, overthrow this prejudice in regard to the cultivation of the colored race. In conversation these men admit that the school system is the only way these colored people can be taught honesty, and made a trusty people.

Before the war there was a code of slavery. Negroes were then subject to a most severe regimen. Now that they are free they want as a general rule to hire lands instead of working for their former owners or others by the month or year. Certainly they are not in their present state capable of carrying on business for themselves. Like all the poor whites, they have great expectations for few realizations.