northern man has no difficulty in making contracts, and but little in
enforcing them. The complaints of southern men that the contracts are not
well observed by the freedmen are in many instances well founded. The same
can be said of the complaints of freedmen with regard to the planters. The
negro, fresh from slavery, has naturally but a crude idea of the binding
force of a written agreement, and it is galling to many of the planters to
stand in such relations as a contract establishes to those who formerly
were their slaves. I was, however, informed by officers of the Freedmen's
Bureau, and by planters also, that things were improving in that respect.
Contracts will be more readily entered into and more strictly kept as soon
as the intimate relations between labor and compensation are better
understood and appreciated on both sides.

_Insolence and insubordination_.--The new spirit which emancipation has
awakened in the colored people has undoubtedly developed itself in some
individuals, especially young men, to an offensive degree. Hence cases of
insolence on the part of freedmen occur. But such occurrences are
comparatively rare. On the whole, the conduct of the colored people is far
more submissive than anybody had a right to expect. The acts of violence
perpetrated by freedmen against white persons do not stand in any
proportion to those committed by whites against negroes. Every such
occurrence is sure to be noticed in the southern papers and we have heard
of but very few.

When Southern people speak of the insolence of the negro, they generally
mean something which persons who never lived under the system of slavery
are not apt to appreciate. It is but very rarely what would be called
insolence among equals. But, as an old planter said to me, "our people
cannot realize yet that the negro is free." A negro is called insolent
whenever his conduct varies in any manner from what a southern man was