employers themselves had informed me. In a majority of cases the reply was
that we northern people did not understand the negro, but that they (the
southerners) did; that as to the particular instances I quoted I was
probably mistaken; that I had not closely investigated the cases, or had
been deceived by my informants; that they _knew_ the negro would not work
without compulsion, and that nobody could make them believe he would.
Arguments like these naturally finished such discussions. It frequently
struck me that persons who conversed about every other subject calmly and
sensibly would lose their temper as soon as the negro question was
touched.

EFFECTS OF SUCH OPINIONS, AND GENERAL TREATMENT OF THE NEGRO.

A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or whatever you may call it, so widely
spread and apparently so deeply rooted as this, that the negro will not
work without physical compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very
serious influence upon the conduct of the people entertaining it. It
naturally produced a desire to preserve slavery in its original form as
much and as long as possible--and you may, perhaps, remember the admission
made by one of the provisional governors, over two months after the close
of the war, that the people of his State still indulged in a lingering
hope slavery might yet be preserved--or to introduce into the new system
that element of physical compulsion which would make the negro work.
Efforts were, indeed, made to hold the negro in his old state of
subjection, especially in such localities where our military forces had
not yet penetrated, or where the country was not garrisoned in detail.
Here and there planters succeeded for a limited period to keep their
former slaves in ignorance, or at least doubt, about their new rights; but
the main agency employed for that purpose was force and intimidation. In
many instances negroes who walked away from the plantations, or were found