Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/240

228 stealing is not the crime that it becomes in free industry. The slave is victim of a theft so hate- ful that nothing he can steal can ever match it. The freedmen of 1868 still shared the slave psychology. The larger part of the stealing was done by white men-Northerners and Southerners and we must remember that it was not the first time that there had been stealing and corruption in the South and that the whole moral tone of the nation had been ruined by war. For instance:

In 1839 it was reported in Mississippi that ninety per cent of the fines collected by sheriffs and clerks were unaccounted for. In 1841 the State Treasurer acknowledged himself "at a loss to determine the precise liabilities of the state and her means of paying the same." And in 1839 the auditor's books had not been posted for eighteen months, no entries made for a year, and no vouchers examined for three years. Congress gave Jefferson College, Natchez, more than 46,000 acres of land; before the war this whole property had "disappeared" and the college was closed. Congress gave to Mississippi among other states, the "16th section" of the public lands for schools. In thirty years the proceeds of this land in Mississippi were embezzled to the amount of at least one and a half millions of dollars. In Columbus, Mississippi a receiver of public monies