people. There are exceptions to this rule, but, as far as my information
extends, far from enough to affect the rule. In the accompanying documents
you will find an abundance of proof in support of this statement. There is
hardly a paper relative to the negro question annexed to this report which
does not, in some direct or indirect way, corroborate it.

Unfortunately the disorders necessarily growing out of the transition
state continually furnished food for argument. I found but few people who
were willing to make due allowance for the adverse influence of
exceptional circumstances. By a large majority of those I came in contact
with, and they mostly belonged to the more intelligent class, every
irregularity that occurred was directly charged against the system of free
labor. If negroes walked away from the plantations, it was conclusive
proof of the incorrigible instability of the negro, and the
impracticability of free negro labor. If some individual negroes violated
the terms of their contract, it proved unanswerably that no negro had, or
ever would have, a just conception of the binding force of a contract, and
that this system of free negro labor was bound to be a failure. If some
negroes shirked, or did not perform their task with sufficient alacrity,
it was produced as irrefutable evidence to show that physical compulsion
was actually indispensable to make the negro work. If negroes, idlers or
refugees crawling about the towns, applied to the authorities for
subsistence, it was quoted as incontestably establishing the point that
the negro was too improvident to take care of himself, and must
necessarily be consigned to the care of a master. I heard a Georgia
planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself
certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a
whipping. I frequently went into an argument with those putting forth such
general assertions, quoting instances in which negro laborers were working
faithfully, and to the entire satisfaction of their employers, as the