The Freedmen [pp. 489-493]

THE FREEDMEN.
and then only for a few days or weeks. No crop whatever can be
made, gathered and sent to market with such laborers. Our sole
reliance hereafter, as heretofore, for farm hands, must be on the ne groes. The two races at the South now understand fully their rela tions to each other, and must make the most of those relations. They
are mutually dependent. The Freedmnen cannot live without the pro ducts of the land, and can, in general, only procure those products
by laboring for white landowners, for Freedmen own very little
land. But lands are wholly unproductive without labor, and hence
landowners (at least the owners of large tracts, such as usually con stitute farms in the South) are as dependent on the Freedmen for
their labor as they are on the landowners for employment, either as
tenants or hired hands. Both the Whites and the Freedmen seeing
this state of things, should, and probably will, with a view to their
mutual interest, cultivate kindly and amicable relations, and frown
down all attempts to excite antipathy and hostility of.race between
them. Dependent as we are, and shall continue to be, on negro labor, we should by kind and humane treatment, coupled with exact
and rigid discipline, do all in our power to keep them among us, to
improve their morals and their intelligence, and to multiply their
numbers. Some of them will acquire independent properties, and
become useful, moral, intelligent, and respectable citizens; for the
avenues to wealth are equally open to them as to the whites. The
example of such will be an incentive to all to diligent industry and
provident habits. On the other hand, severe penal laws, rigidly enforced, applying equally to blacks and whites, will deter mniost of
them from crime. More of the whites than formerly will be demoralized by association with the vicious portion of the Freedmen,
and the Freedmen, having no masters to enforce morality among
them, will, unless checked by many and severe penal laws, become
much more imnmoral and vicious than when in a state of slavery.
Our criminal codes, applying equally to blacks and whites, must be
revised, increased in severity, and rigidly and inexorably enforced
by our courts and juries. Vagrant laws deserve especial attention, revisal and enforcement. Punish the Freedmen in all cases
for criminal conduct, and encourage them by kind, humane, attentive
and liberal treatment when they behave well, and it is quite possible
we may make them as good laborers as the white workingmen of
Europe or the North. When the Federal troops and the Freedmen's Bureau are withdrawn from the South, the negroes will be
left in a state of great apprehension and alarm. Many of them,
trusting to the protection of those troops and of that Bureau, have
been guilty of great insolence and wrongs to our white citizens, and
they fear that when they are removed the whites will visit indiscriminate punishment and revenge on the whole race. It will be our
first and most imperative duty to let "by-gones be )y-gones," to recollect that under the exultation of newly-acquired liberty, with Federal armies, and a Federal press and Congress to back and uphold
them, boastful insolence and insubordination on their parts were
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