Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/17

Rh revenue. As they were furnished by our friends at cost, and usually purchased very low by taking advantage of fluctuations in the market, we have been able to dispose of them at a large discount from the ruling prices in New Berne. Still another branch of my operations in aid of the freedmen during the last year, was furnishing commissary stores or rations to government employees, on certificates of indebtedness from their employers, with which to feed their families until pay-day came. The wages of perhaps two thousand colored men, employed by quartermasters, engineers, &c, on behalf of the government, were from four to six months in arrears. For the laborers themselves rations were furnished, but their wives and children had nothing to eat, and nothing with which to buy food. Under these circumstances, I was permitted, by the commanding General, to buy food, in bulk, of the chief commissary, for cash, and furnish it to these people on credit, taking the risk of being reimbursed when they should be paid off. These purchases reached the sum of ten thousand dollars. As is the case in most philanthropic transactions, the reward came in the satisfaction of having extended timely relief, but with pecuniary loss to the agents. The death of some parties, and the removal of others to Virginia and elsewhere, will leave the account several hundred dollars deficient. The wages of most of these men do not exceed ten dollars per month, and rations, and they rely upon them for the support of their families. If payment be delayed, they are reduced to straits. After the passage by Congress of the bill permitting the enlistment in rebel states of soldiers to be counted upon the quota of the loyal states enlisting them, the city of New Berne was flooded with recruiting agents, and able-bodied negroes were in great demand. But of the 250 who were enlisted from this District, and who were said to have received heavy bounties, few present any appearance of having been thus furnished. Their families are nearly as dependent on the Government for food as if no bounty had been offered or paid, suggesting the suspicion that the money found its way into the wrong pocket. While some of the recruiting agents in North Carolina were persons of integrity and honor, gentlemen in every sense of the word, it is not too much to say that others were scoundrels of the deepest dye,