in _their_ field. Millions of dollars have been "raised" to root out
the illiteracy and immorality of the Freedmen, and to build up their
shattered manhood. Indeed, there have been times when I have seriously
debated the question, whether the black man had any manhood left,
after the missionaries and religious enthusiasts had done picturing,
or, rather, caricaturing his debased moral and mental condition. He
has been made the victim of the most exalted panegyric by one set of
fanatics, and of the most painful, malignant abuse and detraction by
another set. The one has painted him as a sort of angel, and the other
as a sort of devil; when, in fact, he is neither one nor the other;
when, simply, he is a _man_, a member of the common family, possessing
no more virtue nor vice than his brother, the brother who has managed
to so impose upon himself that he is pretty thoroughly convinced that
nature expended all its most choice materials in the construction of
his class. But this is simply the work of the devil, who delights in
throwing cayenne pepper into the eyes of good men.

The aspects of the work which has been done in the South for the
colored people by "missionaries," so to term them, by the assistance
of large sums of money donated by philanthropic men and women, are
very many-sided indeed. I would in no wise underrate the magnitude of
the work performed, nor attribute to those who have been the agents in
disbursing these unparalleled benefactions motives other than of the
purest and loftiest, in a majority of cases; but I think the time has
arrived when we may disrobe the matter of the romance which writers
have industriously woven about it. In the early stages of the work a
few men and women of large fortunes, who had been "born with a silver
spoon in their mouths," may have gone South to labor for humanity and
the Master, may have left comfortable firesides and congenial
companionships to make their homes among strangers who shut them out