Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/46

44 us to urge forward these labors of love with all possible energy. This is our hour and opportunity, while crowds of freedmen are hovering about our armies, and hiding behind our fortifications, to give them the instruction, and impart to them the impulses which they will retain after our armies are recalled, and the wave of southern population has rolled back within its former limits; which will prepare them, simple, untutored children of the sun, for the new responsibilities of life under freedom, and make them helpful of the honor and glory of the State. Upon no part of our work do I look with such satisfaction as upon this.

The experience of the last year has confirmed me in some opinions which a previous sojourn of two years in North Carolina had suggested. Let them be taken for what they are worth. The negroes are not so helpless and dependent as the poor whites. They are more fertile in expedients, more industrious, more religious, and more active and vigorous in body and mind. The pure blooded Africans are superior to the mulattoes. Mixture of blood diminishes vitality and force, and shortens life. What is gained in cerebral development, is lost in tendency to scrofula, and other diseases. Yellow children acquire knowledge no faster than blacks, and yellow women are frailer than their dark sisters. "Miscegenation" is the last measure to be recommended for the elevation of the negro race, whether morally or physically. The negroes are grateful for liberty, and but little inclined to abuse it. They know, as we do not, what slavery means, and are truly grateful that they have escaped it. It would be natural enough for their minds to react, and go to the other extreme of rude and disgusting boldness in their new powers and privileges. But only occasionally is one found who would put upon the white man's limbs the fetters which have dropped from his own. Devout thankfulness to God is their prevailing sentiment.

The negroes strongly aspire to the common rights of citizens. If they have been set free, they want liberty to buy and sell and get gain, to select and favor their own church, school, and party, to defend themselves, to litigate with and implead one another,