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I accordingly sent out and invited the most intelligent of the negroes, mostly Baptist and Methodist preachers, to come to my rooms to meet the Secretary of War. Twenty responded, and were received in my room up-stairs in Mr. Green's house, where Mr. Stanton and Adjutant-General Townsend took down the conversation in the form of questions and answers.
Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away.
Judge DANA, in reply to the remark of some gentlemen, that the southern States were favored in this mode of apportionment, by having five of their negroes set against three persons in the eastern, the honorable judge observed, that the negroes of the southern States work no longer than when the eye of the driver is on them.
In one house live several families, and the degree of rent, as well as of social position, rises with the height of the floor above the ground. The lower floors, as a rule, are very dirty, and are crowded in a most unhealthful way by negroes and the servants of those who live above.
We negroes are ignorant, and have been made loose, deceitful, and idle, by slavery. The whites have been made tyrannical and unjust, by being masters. They believe us now ambitious, rebellious, and revengeful, because it would be no wonder if we were so. All this injustice comes of our former slavery. God forbid that I should be unjust too, and lay the blame where it is not due!
Now mark what the white man, the supposed representative of civilization and Christianity, did. Fearing that the negroes would exhaust the store of provisions and water that had been landed, they resolved to destroy them while still in the water.
"Remember," said he, in speaking of Negroes and other slaves, "that they are of as good a kind as you; that is, they are reasonable creatures as well as you, and born to as much natural liberty. If their sin have enslaved them to you, yet Nature made them your equals."
Influence, wealth, and character will certainly destroy those prejudices which now separate you from society." To expect the coöperation of the white working classes in thus elevating the colored race turned out to be a delusion. They reached the conclusion that in making their headway against capital they had a better chance without Negroes than with them.
There were ten of us in the gang, several being negroes, and I was unable to extract any information of value from those I attempted to converse with.
To make a promise to a negro, and fail to keep it, was no worse than to lure a horse into a stable-yard, by offering him a choice feed of corn, which would prove but a single mouthful. That the negroes had any human rights was apparently rarely suspected by their owners and overseers.
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