The first southern men with whom I came into contact after my arrival at
Charleston designated the general conduct of the emancipated slaves as
surprisingly good. Some went even so far as to call it admirable. The
connexion in which they used these laudatory terms was this: A great many
colored people while in slavery had undoubtedly suffered much hardship
and submitted to great wrongs, partly inseparably connected with
the condition of servitude, and partly aggravated by the individual
wilfulness and cruelty of their masters and overseers. They were suddenly
set free; and not only that: their masters but a short time ago almost
omnipotent on their domains, found themselves, after their defeat in the
war, all at once face to face with their former slaves as a conquered and
powerless class. Never was the temptation to indulge in acts of vengeance
for wrongs suffered more strongly presented than to the colored people of
the south; but no instance of such individual revenge was then on record,
nor have I since heard of any case of violence that could be traced
to such motives. The transition of the southern negro from slavery to
freedom was untarnished by any deeds of blood, and the apprehension so
extensively entertained and so pathetically declaimed upon by many, that
the sudden and general emancipation of the slaves would at once result in
"all the horrors of St. Domingo," proved utterly groundless. This was the
first impression I received after my arrival in the south, and I received
it from the mouths of late slaveholders. Nor do I think the praise was
unjustly bestowed. In this respect the emancipated slaves of the south
can challenge comparison with any race long held in servitude and
suddenly set free. As to the dangers of the future, I shall speak of them
in another connexion.

But at that point the unqualified praise stopped and the complaints began:
the negroes would not work; they left their plantations and went wandering