The reports of the Cherokee agent during the year 1855 devote
considerable space to the discussion of the slavery question in
its relations to and among that nation, from which it appears that
considerable local excitement, as well as a general feeling of
irritation and insecurity among the holders of slave property, had been
superinduced by the antislavery teachings of the Northern missionaries
and emissaries of the various free soil organizations throughout the
North. Three years later the agent reported that the amicable relations
which existed between the Cherokees and the General Government
certainly merited the latter's fostering care and protection, for
already they were evincing much interest in all questions that
concerned its welfare; that the majority of them were strongly national
or democratic in political sympathy, though it was with regret he
was obliged to report the existence of a few black republicans,
who were the particular foundlings of the abolition missionaries.
This same agent the following year (1859), after commending their
enterprise and thrift, remarks: "I am clearly of the opinion that the
rapid advancement of the Cherokees is owing in part to the fact of
their being slaveholders, which has operated as an incentive to all
industrial pursuits, and I believe if every family of the wild roving
tribes of Indians were to own a negro man and woman, who would teach
them to cultivate the soil and to properly prepare and cook their
food, and could have a schoolmaster appointed for every district, it
would tend more to civilize them than any plan that could be adopted."
The latter part of this proposition perhaps no one would be willing
to dispute, but in the light of twenty-five years of eventful history
made since its promulgation, the author himself, if still living, would
scarcely be so "clearly of opinion" concerning the soundness of his
first assumption.