work again as before. The reports from sub-commissioners nearest that
locality show that the blacks are in a much worse state than ever before,
the able-bodied being kept at work under the lash, and the young and
infirm driven off to care for themselves. As to protection from the civil
authorities, there is no such thing outside of this city." (Accompanying
document No. 26.)

The conviction, however, that slavery in the old form cannot be maintained
has forced itself upon the minds of many of those who ardently desired its
preservation. But while the necessity of a new system was recognized as
far as the right of property in the individual negro is concerned, many
attempts were made to introduce into that new system the element of
physical compulsion, which, as above stated, is so generally considered
indispensable. This was done by simply adhering, as to the treatment of
the laborers, as much as possible to the traditions of the old system,
even where the relations between employers and laborers had been fixed by
contract. The practice of corporal punishment was still continued to a
great extent, although, perhaps, not in so regular a manner as it was
practiced in times gone by. It is hardly necessary to quote any
documentary evidence on this point; the papers appended to this report are
full of testimony corroborating the statement. The habit is so inveterate
with a great many persons as to render, on the least provocation, the
impulse to whip a negro almost irresistible. It will continue to be so
until the southern people will have learned, so as never to forget it,
that a black man has rights which a white man is bound to respect.

Here I will insert some remarks on the general treatment of the blacks as
a class, from the whites as a class. It is not on the plantations and at
the hands of the planters themselves that the negroes have to suffer the
greatest hardships. Not only the former slaveholders, but the