me something, and he agreed to pay me a certain amount in corn each year; at the beginning of each month. The roads were very bad, and he goes to Robinson's and said, "I want you to let me have ten bushels of toll-corn on the first day of every month, and I will pay the corn back as soon as I can.' He says "Yes; I would be glad to make that arrangement." And I sent for the first ten bushels of corn, and my son went there, and when he found out it was for me, he sent word: "I have taken an oath not to aid any leading radical for love or money, and I can not let you have any more corn for his benefit.". They would not patronize me after that as a physician. Before this I had a tolerable respectable practice.

Social Conditions in 1875

Nordhoff, Cotton States, pp. 10, 55, 76, 96, 111.

[1875]

THE Southern white population differs from ours in one or two important respects. . . There is a more marked distinction between the wealthy and the poor man than is commonly found in the North. The numerous class of poor white farmers are a kind of people unknown among us. Settled upon a thin and unfertile soil; long and constantly neglected before the war; living still in a backwoods country, and in true backwoods style, without schools, with few churches, and given to rude sports and a rude agriculture, they are a peculiar people. They have more good qualities than their wealthier neighbors, the planters, always allow them; but they are ignorant, easily prejudiced, and they have, since the war, lived in a dread of having social equality with the negro imposed upon them. This fear has bred hatred of the blacks, which has often, in former years, found expression in brutal acts, to which, I believe, in the majority of cases, they were instigated by bad men of a class above them. . .

What the Southern Republican too often requires is that the Southern Democrat should humiliate himself, and make penitent confession that slavery was a sin, that secession was wrong, and that the war was an inexcusable crime. .

The Southern Republican seems to me unfair and unreason

able in another way. They complain constantly that the Southern whites still admire and are faithful to their own leaders: and that they like to talk about the bravery of the South during the war, and about the great qualities of their leading men. There seems to me something childish, and even cowardly, in this complaint. The Southern man who fought and believed in it, would be a despicable being if he should now turn around and blacken the characters of his generals and political leaders, or if he should not think with pride of the feats of arms and of endurance of his side; or if, having been plundered by the Republicans since the war, he should fling up his hat for that party. . .

In the North we have heard so much about murders that I was very glad to get hold here of some parish statistics on this subject. The State government, which has almost entirely neglected to punish murderers- being too busily engaged in stealing -has, of course, no such official returns of crimes as it ought to possess. I have been able to obtain returns, chiefly made by the county clerks and coroners, from only 13 parishes. From 1868 to 1875 there have been in these 13 parishes 313 murders. Of these 93 were of whites by whites, 143 were of colored by colored, 28 were of whites by colored, 32 colored by whites, 3 colored by officers of justice, 5 colored by persons unknown, 7 whites by persons unknown, 5 whites by mobs, and 5 colored by mobs.

The State has 57 parishes. Most of the 13 of which I have given returns have a population nearly equally divided between white and black, and I suspect the figures give more than an average number of murders of whites by whites, and less than the average number of murders of blacks by blacks.

Life is not held sacred, as it is in the North. Everybody goes armed, and every trifling dispute is ended with the pistol. Nearly all the disorder and crime is caused by the lower order of whites and by negroes; for these latter have, it seems, generally taken up the habit of carrying arms, and in their quarrels among themselves use their pistol or knife freely. The

respectable people of the State do not discourage the practice of carrying arms as they should; they are astonishingly tolerant of acts which would arouse a Northern community to the

utmost. . .

The Republican party of North Carolina1 is composed of the great body of the negroes, and of a large mass of the poor whites in the western, or mountain, districts. But these small white farmers dislike the negro, whom they know little about, and are easily alarmed at the thought of social equality with him. The Democratic politicians very naturally worked upon their fears on this point, and thus found their best argument put into their hands by those Republican leaders in the North who insisted upon this measure [Civil Rights Bill].

It is but just to add that, if the dread of "social equality" were likely to die out, this would be skillfully prevented by some leading Republicans, chief of whom is the Northern Methodist Bishop Haven, who has on several occasions openly declared himself in favor of "social equality," and who appears to me to have quite a genius for keeping alive a subject which naturally stirs up rancorous feelings, and which is best left to settle itself.

1. Conditions were similar in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama.

2.

CONDITIONS AMONG THE NEGROES

Low Country and Up Country Negroes

Ku Klux Report, Georgia testimony, p. 306. Statement of Gen. John B. Gordon.

[1871]

THOSE negroes upon the coast are very different from the negroes in Middle and Upper Georgia; they are almost an entirely different race of people. They are excessively ignorant. The intelligence of the negro in the middle and upper counties of Georgia is very much the same as the intelligence of the negro here or anywhere over the country. But in the southern portion of the State, where there is a large negro belt . . the negroes have absolutely a language of their own. If a negro from Washington were to talk with a negro from Atlanta, or the upper portion of Georgia, their language would be the same; they would use about the same words to express the same ideas. But it is not so on the coast. If a negro were transported from this city [Washington] to the coast of Georgia, he would not understand . . a great deal that many of the negroes of that coast would say. Their old masters, who grew up with them, do understand their language. is different from the language of the negroes in any other portion of our State, or any other portion of the South, except along the Atlantic belt. . .

It

They have also a peculiar religion. I have attended what they call their religious meetings; and they have what they call "shouting." They say, "We are going to have a shouting tonight." If you staid outside when that shouting was going on, it would remind you very much of the accounts that we read of the worship of the howling dervishes. They sing, shout, take hold of hands, and go around dancing and jumping until one faints; then he is considered as "having religion." That is the style of worship not only in that portion of Georgia, but it is now extending up the State. I had a large plantation in Dougherty County, Georgia. [On my plantation in

Dougherty County] three years ago there was no such religion as this known. The negroes belonged to various churches; mainly the Baptist and Methodist. Those were the most popular churches among the negroes of Georgia. But now this particular religion which they call "shouting," has been imported up there, and ingrafted upon their style of worship. It is extending higher up in the State, and is gradually getting possession of all the negroes there. To carry on these exercises, they will sit up all night long, and sometimes many nights in succession; so that it is a source of very great annoyance to the planter who depends on their labor for his crops. . . It is a general thing on the coast, and is being introduced into the counties in Southwest Georgia, the cotton-growing counties of the State. . .

The races [up state] are more equally divided. On the coast, where the planter staid in the winter time only, the negroes scarcely ever saw a white person; but in the upper part of the State, where I was raised, the negro children and the white children have been in the habit of playing together. My companions, when I was being raised, were the negro boys that my father owned. We played marbles, rode oxen, went fishing, and broke colts together; a part of my fun was to play with those colored boys. The negro girls those who were raised about the house - were raised very much as the white family was raised. They were raised in the family, and, of course, the intelligence of the family was extended, in some measure, to the negroes. The plantations there were nothing like so large as those on the coast. The white people lived on their plantations all the year round. The negroes mingled with them, and grew up into a very different class of people from those on the coast.

Feeling between Whites and Blacks

Ku Klux Report, (1) Georgia testimony, p. 833. Statement of C. W. Howard, a Georgia editor. Georgia was then getting under the control of the whites; (2) South Carolina testimony, p. 1430. [1871]

[1] THE negroes show their inherent vices, indolence,