_Coffin's Point, Oct. 9._ I have no reason to complain of my people
for any extraordinary delinquencies, for they have worked as well as
we shall probably ever be able to get these negroes to work; but I
have frequently had occasion to be vexed at their slow, shiftless
habits and at their general stupidity. It is a very great trial to
any Northern man to have to deal with such a set of people, and I am
satisfied that if Northerners emigrate to the South and undertake
agriculture or anything else here, they will be compelled to import
white laborers. In the first place, they will not have the patience to
get along with the negroes, even if there were enough of these
freedmen to do all the work. But, in the second place, there will not
be one quarter enough of them to supply the demand there will be for
laborers when the uncleared land at the South is brought under
cultivation. The old slaveholders could never get hands enough, and
yet they cultivated only about one tenth of the land that is fit for
cotton.
It need hardly be said that this prophecy has not yet been
fulfilled.