without the intelligence to provide for themselves when sick, and doomed to untold sufferings and ultimate extinction unless we intervene for their protection and preservation.

Much has been said of late about the importance of white labor from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and other countries, and with proper limitations and restrictions I am in favor of it; but let us always remember that we have a laboring class of our own, which is entitled to the preference. It is not sufficient to say that white labor is cheaper. I trust we are not yet so far degraded as to consult interest alone. But interest alone would dictate that it is better to give these people employment, and enable them to support themselves, than to have them remain upon our hands as a pauper race; for here they are, and here.. they are obliged to stay. We must remember that these black people are natives of this country, and have a pre-emption right to be the recipients of whatever favors we may have to bestow. We must protect them, if not against the competition, at any rate against the exactions of white immigrants. They will expect our black laborers to do as much work in this climate as they have been accustomed to see white ones perform in more northern latitudes. We know that they cannot do it. They never did it for us as slaves, and the experience of the last six months shows that they will do no better as freedmen. . . But I fear those who may migrate hither from Europe or elsewhere will be unmindful of this fact. We ought not to forget it, and between foreign and black labor we ought always to give the preference to the latter when we can possibly make it available. And if we can offer sufficient inducements, I am inclined to think that the black man, as a field laborer, in our climate, will prove more efficient than the imported white.

We ought to encourage our colored people to virtue and industry by all means in our power. We ought to protect them in all their rights, both of person and property, as fully as we do the whites.

Negro Testimony in North Carolina

Senate Ex. Doc. no. 26, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 52. Report of a committee of the North Carolina legislature. [January 22, 1866]

THE Committee are aware that the great and radical changes occasioned by emancipation, in the fixed habits and customs of the people, cannot be truly estimated at once, and therefore they forbear to speculate by legislative anticipation, for such changes as may even probably become necessary in the course of time. . . They prefer to let the common law apply its flexible rules for human conduct to the new state of things, rather than frame for it rigid and perhaps misconceived legislation.

The general assembly will perceive that we have omitted all such punishments as the involuntary hiring out of persons of color, and also of whipping them, except in cases where white persons are thus punished.

There are comparatively few of the slaves lately freed who are honest; but this vice now so prevalent among them may be traced to other and more probable causes than any natural depravity peculiar to the negro race, which, by some physiologists, are declared to be naturally destitute of moral principles in a greater degree than any other people yet known. The committee have not regulated their code by this doctrine. And if it were true, there is the greatest necessity for correcting the natural obliquity by proper civil institutions wisely administered. That the race is not beyond the reach of a proper moral training, is evident from the many examples among them of sobriety, industry, and honesty. If it owed its depravity to the vicious nature peculiar to the race, we ought to be able by this time to trace some steps of improvement in the mixture of its blood with that of other races of men. The committee have not discovered, nor has it been maintained, that the mixed-blooded slave has been elevated in the moral virtue of the white race as he advanced toward it in color. . .

We recommend that the courts should be fully opened to the negro race, for protection and property, and all the rights of freedmen, by being heard as witnesses whenever these rights are in controversy. The enactment recommended allows their

evidence in civil cases only where the rights of person or property of persons of color would be precluded by the judgment or decrees made in those cases. And in criminal cases, only where violence, fraud, or injury charged to have been done by or on them is put directly in issue.

If the testimony is to be admitted, at all, it ought to be extended to such cases. The effect of thus limiting it will not deny them any advantages, but, on the contrary, will secure to them the most perfect protection that human evidence can afford... The result of allowing it to this extent will be, that when colored persons are parties they may call to the witness stand the whole population of the land not rendered incompetent by want of understanding, interest, or religious unbelief; while in cases where white persons are parties, white persons only will be competent witnesses.

The committee will proceed to give some of the reasons which have induced them to recommend the reception of the evidence of negroes.

First. The present helpless and unprotected condition of the race demands it.

Their condition of personal security is greatly changed. Prior to emancipation they were grouped on farms which they seldom left, and were overlooked by their masters or overseers, surrounded by families of white children.

They were not only watched by the whites to preserve the discipline necessary for servitude, and to prevent spoliations, but were cared for and protected as property. It was the slave-holder's interest to prevent, and, when committed to punish, any injuries done to the persons of their slaves. The interest of one slaveholder was the interest of all; so that their security was guaranteed by the common interest of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, and, of course, of all their kindred and adherents, among whom, generally, were their poorer white neighbors. Thus the person of the slave (without reckoning the feelings of humanity which have generally characterized the slaveholders of this State) became the subject of general protection by every class of white men, and

any outrages on his person a general cause for common vindication. With this shield of security, the white aggressor was checked in his violence; and if not, his detection was almost sure. These sources of personal security are all removed by emancipation, and, without capacity to bear evidence, he stands in numerous cases utterly defenceless, except by opposing force to force against every species of outrage offered to himself or to his family. . . If he should submit to the violence, and suffer the most grievous wrongs, there is no one who can be heard in his behalf; and he could expect, from his submission, nothing less than a repetition of his unredressed wrongs. If he should oppose force to force in the justest cause, whatever might be the result, his mouth and the mouths of all colored witnesses would be closed. . .

Breaches of the peace always decrease in proportion to the facility and impartiality with which the violator is brought to justice. Citizens will not readily avenge themselves when the sword of the law is at hand to do it for them; but when the law is powerless, from whatever cause, the hand of private violence will be sure to come to the aid of self-defence. It is, therefore, clear that by protecting the person of the negro, we shall most certainly protect the person of the white man. the former may be outraged. . with impunity, because he may be incompetent to testify to the wrong, he will turn from the door of the court-house and seek his redress elsewhere. . .

If

Secondly. The admission of such evidence is necessary to secure the colored people in their rights of property.

While in slavery they had no property. What was set apart for their use belonged to their master, and was under his protection. In their new state they enter on the broad ground of citizenship, and become actors in all the departments of social life. They are allowed to trade with the white man in every article of property; to possess and cultivate lands, and, by all wise means, should be encouraged to habits of industry and a desire for honest acquisition.

The protection of a man's honest gains should ever be, after the protection of his person, the next great policy of a wise

Commonwealth. If the property which a negro shall own, his cattle, his money, may all be carried off, yea, his very house robbed of its furniture, and his person of his valuables, by abandoned white men, and he shall be unable to bring the robbers to justice because the witnesses are colored, can the race feel any ardent disposition to labor for themselves? On the contrary, will they not feel doubly tempted by such want of security for their own property to become depredators themselves, especially when they reflect that it is the white man's policy which thus exposes them to licentious white men? But, besides such glaring cases of public wrongs which would go unredressed by excluding their evidence, there are many of a more private nature which depraved white men would perpetrate on them or procure to be done by their negro associates as their instruments. Already the wicked white man and corrupt dependent negro have banded together in lawless thefts and frauds on industrious and peaceful citizens, both white and black; and the white associate, if negro evidence shall be excluded, will stand secure in his villany behind his colored friend.

The calamity to public virtue and private rights would be incalculable if those who were injured could not testify against the perpetrator of the crime. How shocked would every citizen of North Carolina feel if the legislature should enact that no person assaulted and beaten, no one whose property was stolen, no one robbed, no one ravished, should bear evidence to the crime? The exclusion of negro evidence places that race in just such a condition. .

The protection of persons and property imperiously demands that the evidence of colored persons be admitted for that purpose, unless it should be excluded upon some ground of public policy still higher than such as favors its introduction. We have heard of but one that is plausible, and that is the general falsity of such evidence. No one pretends that it is universally false. It is urged, however, that, for the greater part, the evidence is not reliable, and, if universally believed, would produce far more wrong than right.

We are fully aware of a lamentable prevalence of this vice