Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/48

46 employ and pay them. They are now a nation of servants. They will always make the most faithful, pliable, obedient, devoted servants that can enter our dwellings. And the foolish prejudice against color which prevails, I am forced to believe, even among the best people of the North, should immediately give way, that they may take their proper place in all our households: not to throw white laborers out of employment, but to lift them higher in the social scale, and engage them in labors which require more skill. In the successive orders or ranks of industrial pursuits, those who have the least intelligence must needs perform the more menial services, without respect to color or birth. Give the colored man equality, not of social condition, but equality before the law, and if he proves himself the superior of the Anglo-Saxon, who can hinder it? If he shall fall below him, who can help it? undoubtedly the negro has his own place under republican institutions, and eternal laws are sure to bring him into position. This, at least, is our "south-side view." Their elevation as a race is a work of patience and time. The growth of character is slow, especially if one must unlearn the traditions of a lifetime to prepare him to commence aright. One is sorely tempted at times to throw up the work in disgust. The soil seems so unpromising, so choked with poisonous weeds, as to defy cultivation. The negroes are so untrustworthy, so full of all deceitfulness and dishonesty, so enveloped in dirt and rags, that we ask in despair, Is there rain enough in the sweet heavens to cleanse them, or grace sufficient to renew them?

The doubt is but for a moment; for these poor creatures are surely more sinned against than sinning. The shadow of a passing disgust at the abject negro is changed into the fervor of a holy indignation against the crime that debased him when we reflect upon the pent up abuses of many generations now let loose in judgment upon the land, and hear the voice of the Lord, like muttering thunders, saying, let my people go. Verily, with Paul the apostle, we are "debtors to the bond," as well as to the free. The temporary support of a few hundred thousand negroes is but a trifling incident for this nation, and is more than countervailed by their services in the field. When we have gone into every corner of the South, and carried liberty and laws, art and enterprise, learning and pure religion to all these people