Speech #460122646

It is true they are awkward and infacile as agricultural laborers outside of cotton culture. and not adapted to foodproducing husbandry. but upon public works or any large undertakings which require the supervision of intelligent superintendents. there is not a more efficient class of laborers in the world. They are getting educated alsonot as well educated as the laboring population of the North. for our country is sparsely settled and our people poor from the desolations of the late war. We have not as good school systems. but in every State we have colleges. and academies. and schools. and the facilities for education are as good for the black as for the white. and they are under the influence of the Christian religion. as Bishop Simpson says. they are believers in it and cannot be considered a barbarian race or a barbarian immigration wherever they go. For that reason I would not. as a southern man. hinder their emigration. nor. as a northern man. repel it. As to the emigration of twentyfive thousand from the South. why. sir. it is a drop in the bucket. There are more white men that have gone out of Mississippi than that number. and many more than that number have come into the State since the war. and fully fifty thousand negroes have come into Mississippi during the same period. This late movement. therefore. is no indication of deep. grievous wrong perpetrated upon the one side or great suffering on the other.