_Boston, May 3._ As soon as I can get complete information from
Liverpool about my claim on the insurance company,[159] I shall settle
with them and be ready to settle with yourself, G., and Folsom. Are
you not ashamed to put in your own private pocket the proceeds of the
hard labor of the poor abused negro? I think you cannot have read the
_Tribune_ and _Independent_ lately, or you would not be so depraved.
The sarcastic allusion in this last letter to the _Tribune_
and the _Independent_ refers to two letters which had lately
appeared in those papers respectively, the one signed "J. A.
S.," the other anonymous. Both were from Beaufort, and both
attacked Mr. Philbrick for a letter which he had recently
written (February 24) to the New York _Evening Post_. This
letter was the presentation which he had planned to make
proving from his own experience that it was possible to
raise cotton cheaper by free labor than had been possible by
slave labor.[160] In it Mr. Philbrick had also stated his
belief that the land-sales would be an injury to the negro
if they enabled him to buy at $1.25 an acre land which was
already worth much more and would, after the war, rise still
higher in value, for such purchases would be made largely as
speculations, and would destroy all incentive to labor. The
points of attack selected by the writers in the
_Independent_ and the _Tribune_ were Mr. Philbrick's rate of
wages,--why did he not pay his hands $2.50 a day?--his views
on the land-sales, which, they said, showed his desire to
make of the negroes an "agricultural peasantry," as
dependent upon great landed proprietors as ever they had
been in their days of slavery, and the course he had pursued
relative to his own purchases in land. "His own statements
of his intentions induced the almost universal belief that
he desired to buy land for the purpose of testing the
industrial capabilities of the negroes, and when they had
justified his confidence in this respect, that he would sell
them the lands in small allotments at the cost to himself."
His actual performance now, on the other hand, was to put
the price of his lands "further from their reach than
before," fixing it "according to the increased value which
their labor and proved capacity have given them." To these
three accusations Mr. Philbrick made reply in two letters.
First, as to the auction-sales, he agreed "that the good
faith of the Government should have been kept in regard to
the promised homesteads, however we may differ in opinion as
to the expediency of making the promise at this time."
Second, as to his scale of wages, he maintained that, on his
plantations, "whenever the amount of work done in a day
approaches the standard of a day's work in the North, the
wages also approach the limit of Northern wages, under
similar conditions."[161] Third, as to his alleged promise
to sell his land to negroes at cost, he said, "I am not
aware that I have ever committed myself to any definite
plans for disposing of this land; for I have not been able
to digest or mature any plan satisfactory to myself."[162]
There is nothing vital in these two letters of Mr.
Philbrick's which is new to the reader of these pages. They
are based on his firm belief that it was no kindness to the
negro to make discriminations in his favor.
Mr. Philbrick's message to his superintendents about the
increased pay demanded by 'Siah and Pompey, and his advice
to W. C. G. in the matter of corn planted between the rows
of cotton were as follows: