to remain upon any footing of equality with the white man in that
country." (Accompanying document No. 28.) The disposition to drive away
all the negroes from the plantations was undoubtedly confined to a few
districts; and as far as the scheme of wholesale deportation is concerned,
practical men became aware, that if they wanted to have any labor done, it
would have been bad policy to move away the laborers they now have before
others were there to fill their places. All these devices promising at
best only distant relief, and free negro labor being the only thing in
immediate prospect, many ingenious heads set about to solve the problem,
how to make free labor compulsory by permanent regulations.

Shortly after the close of the war some South Carolina planters tried to
solve this problem by introducing into the contracts provisions leaving
only a small share of the crops to the freedmen, subject to all sorts of
constructive charges, and then binding them to work off the indebtedness
they might incur. It being to a great extent in the power of the employer
to keep the laborer in debt to him, the employer might thus obtain a
permanent hold upon the person of the laborer. It was something like the
system of peonage existing in Mexico. When these contracts were submitted
to the military authorities for ratification, General Hatch, commanding at
Charleston, at once issued an order prohibiting such arrangements. I had
an opportunity to examine one of these contracts, and found it drawn up
with much care, and evidently with a knowledge of the full bearings of the
provisions so inserted.

Appended to this report is a memorandum of a conversation I had with Mr.
W. King, of Georgia, a gentleman of good political sentiments and
undoubtedly benevolent intentions. He recommends a kind of guardianship to
be exercised by the employer over the freedman. He is a fair
representative, not of the completely unprejudiced, but of the more