Freedmen's Bank.

Morally and practically, the Freedmen's Bank was part of
the Freedmen's Bureau, although it had no legal connection
with it. With the prestige of the government back of it, and a
directing board of unusual respectability and national reputa-
tion, this banking institution had made a remarkable start in
the development of that thrift among black folk which slavery
had kept them from knowing. Then in one sad day came the
crash,--all the hard-earned dollars of the freedmen disap-
peared; but that was the least of the loss,--all the faith in
saving went too, and much of the faith in men; and that was a
loss that a Nation which to-day sneers at Negro shiftlessness
has never yet made good. Not even ten additional years of
slavery could have done so much to throttle the thrift of the
freedmen as the mismanagement and bankruptcy of the series
of savings banks chartered by the Nation for their especial
aid. Where all the blame should rest, it is hard to say;
whether the Bureau and the Bank died chiefly by reason of
the blows of its selfish friends or the dark machinations of its
foes, perhaps even time will never reveal, for here lies un-
written history.

Of the foes without the Bureau, the bitterest were those
who attacked not so much its conduct or policy under the law
as the necessity for any such institution at all. Such attacks
came primarily from the Border States and the South; and
they were summed up by Senator Davis, of Kentucky, when
he moved to entitle the act of 1866 a bill "to promote strife
and conflict between the white and black races . . . by a grant