positive that in three instances out of four their parents are not both dead. Negroes possess much amiableness of feeling, but not the least steady, permanent affection. "Out of sight, out of mind," is true of them all. They never grieve twentyfour hours for the death of parents, wives, husbands, or children. Some of the negroes at this place informed us, many months ago, that many of Mrs. Gibbons' orphans had parents in Richmond. About four weeks since, a very interesting little negro child, about two years old, was deserted by its mother, picked up in the streets of Richmond, and brought to Mrs. Gibbons. Not ten days since, just at the approach of a terrific storm, a negro mother left her little daughter, of about five years old, exposed in the field, within a few hundred yards of this place. It was picked up by some kind-hearted negro, and is now in the keeping of the French lady. It is clever, and extremely emaciate. It has been starved. But we do not blame the poor mother. She, too, deprived of a master, was no doubt starving, and the best she could possibly do was thus to expose her child, with the hope that some humane person able to provide for it might find it and take it in charge.

"Abolition" has dissevered the relation of husband and wife among the negroes, as well as that of parent and child. Besides Mrs. Gibbons' zoological gardens, here at Camp Lee, there are some thirty or forty tenements, inhabited by negro women and children. A negro man is scarce ever seen. They have very generally deserted their wives entirely, or live and work at a distance, come once a month to see their families, and bring them nothing when they do come. The very young children here have died out from neglect of their mothers. There are scarce any births, and some three hundred women, and children between the ages of six and sixteen-all as idle as the dogs, which are quite as numerous as the negroes, for they all love dogs and take care of them, however much they may neglect their children. These three hundred "Amazonida" are under the especial charge of the Richmond Bureau. They constitute a zoological garden independent of Mrs. Gibbons' zoological gardens. They are of all colors, from ebony-black to almost pure white; and of all races, except the pure Caucasian. My gardener, Daniel Coleman, is descended from an Indian father, who belonged to the Pamunky tribe, about three hundred of whom now live on the Pamunky River, about forty miles from Richmond. They retain not a word of the Indian language, and have more of negro than Indian blood in their veins. Daniel Coleman's first wife was an Indian woman, and his children have more of the Indian appearance than he. He has a daughter exactly like the picture of Pocahontas in the

Capitol at Washington. He himself has a very aquiline nose; in other respects he resembles the negro more than the Indian. All of his children by his first wife have delicately tapering limbs, very small feet, with high instep. His present wife is a bright mulatto, but her children resemble only the coarse, sluggish negro; yet she is quite a clever woman, and I would sooner confide in her children than those of mixed Indian blood, for all Indians are thorough, unmitigated scoundrels, animals of the feline kind, false, cowardly, hypocritical and cruel. Indians were made to be exterminated. But for abolition negroes might be put to a better use.

Uncle Daniel Coleman (his young wife and everybody else call him Uncle Daniel, although he is ten years younger than we, and we are by no means old), Uncle Daniel, we say, has so little of the Indian blood in him, that he is honest, industrious, reliable, and respected by everybody. He is a universal favorite, a good gardener, and the best chambermaid we ever saw. But his boy John, about fifteen years old, small, handsome, beautifully formed, and active as a cat, is a thorough Indian, and the greatest scoundrel in America, yet we cannot help liking John, for although he cheats or deceives us every day, he is so graceful, so elegant, so polite, that we had much rather be cheated by John, than to receive a favor from a DownEaster, a Dutchman, or a Scotchman. He is the very soul of chivalry, and is always fighting, when he is not cheating or stealing. Nothing could be more amusing than to see Daniel, his father, who is short, fussy, and irascible, trying, or pretending to try, to catch him, to punish him for fighting. John runs twice as fast as Daniel, who soon gets out of breath, and before night forgets his wrath. But yesterday John was regularly arraigned before us by a negro who had lost seven dollars, and been to the fortune-teller's in Richmond, whose description of the thief exactly answered to John. Upon the strength of it he demanded restitution of the money from Daniel. Thereupon the prosecutor, Daniel, Daniel's wife and children, and half the women, boys, and dogs in Camp Lee, came to lay the case before me. I told the prosecutor I did not think his evidence quite sufficient to convict John, and if it were, I was no judge now, and had never been a judge in criminal matters.

These fortune-tellers employ spies and informers, and we shrewdly suspect John did steal the money, yet this evidence was not sufficient to convict.

The negroes have always had very vague notions of the extent of our power and authority as judge, and as they were inclined to think our powers quite as extensive and unlimited as those of Thad Stevens's Radical Congress, we have encour

aged the delusion. Indeed, although we practised law in the civil courts for almost thirty years, we never had very precise notions of military law, especially of Yankee military law, and felt, whilst sitting as judge in the Freedmen's Bureau, pretty much, we suppose, as Sancho Panza felt whilst distributing justice in the island of Barratoria. We assumed that our jurisdiction was almost unlimited, and that we were bound by no system of laws, and therefore ought to decide each case according to our own notions of right and wrong. Proceeding upon this principle, we believe we gave entire and universal satisfaction to all parties, negroes, federals, and confederates. But let us deceive no one. Our notions of right and wrong in matters of law and justice are not the notions of unlettered men. They are derived from almost forty years of study of the laws and institutions of all civilized nations, whether modern or ancient, so far as we had access to them. Crude, indeed, are the ideas of law and of justice of men unlettered in the law.

Our Camp Lee folks are a very party-colored people, and we have given Uncle Daniel and his family only as a sample of the whole. Never lived there a more quiet, indolent, and orderly set. They never work except in strawberry, blackberry, and whortleberry season, and when the peaches and apples begin to get ripe. Very few of them are allowed rations, and how they subsist no one can tell. It is not their fault, however, that they do not work. A stronger, abler and heartier set we never saw; but they have not enough sense to get employment for themselves, the Bureau will not hire them out, and they are taught that it is discreditable and wrong for negro women to work in the field. Now, we know, that there is not a full-blooded negro woman in America fitted for any other work except field work. At that they are almost equal to white men, but in any other capacity, their labor is not worth half that of white women. Half the country ladies of Virginia have worked in their gardens, and some in the fields, during, and since the war, yet these negro wenches are taught to live by crime, rather than work in the field, where alone they are fitted to work. They have, in a great measure, ceased to have children. They have no husbands, and deserve none, for they are too proud to work, and husbands cannot support them in idleness. The inevitable consequence will be, that the vast number of negroes congregated in and about our towns will be rapidly exterminated.

The negroes in the country are contented, and valuable laborers. Having no rent to pay, abundance of food and fuel, and money enough at all times to buy plain necessary clothing,

they are never punished by absolute want, never become restless or insubordinate. Besides, they dwell too far apart to combine for any mischievous purposes. But the excessive numbers of negroes about our towns, for want of employment, are continually in a state bordering on actual starvation, and all starving men are desperate and dangerous. We know from daily and careful observation that the Bureau in Richmond has and still is exerting itself to the utmost of its very limited powers to abate this nuisance, by refusing rations, and advising and persuading the negroes to remove into the country, where they can all find employment. Force, not "moral suasion," governs all men, whether white or black. If the Bureau had the power to take these idle negroes up, and hire them out to the highest bidder, or put them out to the lowest, and were about to exercise the power, the negroes would at once squander, and find masters in the country. But the Radicals are afraid that if negroes are treated no better than poor white people, it will be said that they are re-enslaved, and subjected to a worse form of slavery than that from which they have just escaped. The result of all this must be, that a very large standing army must be kept up in the South by the Federal Government; portions of it stationed at every town south of the Ohio and Mason and Dixon's line; or the Constitution must be amended so as to authorize the several States to maintain standing armies. But even after all this is done, there will be frequent bloody collisions between the races in all of our Southern towns. Negroes, so useful in the country, are an abominable nuisance in town. Mobs at the South, after a time, will drive them out, as mobs have often done at the North. The Radicals hold the wolf by the ears. They have not tamed him, and instead of letting him go, are trying to mend their hold. This wolf is the opposing races in our towns and cities. In conquering the South and freeing the negroes, they but bought the elephant and now they know not what to do with him. But he is their elephant, not ours, and we are of opinion should be left with them to be nursed and cared for. In two more years they will grow heartily tired of nursing this elephant and holding the wolf by the ears. Standing armies and Freedmen's Bureaus are rather more expensive cages than the country can now afford. These negro nurseries will be broken up, and their inmates, probably, be turned over to us at the South, to try our hands at nursing. If the North, after turning them over to us, will not intermeddle in their management, we will at once tame them, and make them useful, and instead of costing the nation some thirty millions a year, they will yield a neat annual profit to it of some two hundred millions.

Then you will hear no more of idle, discontented, starving negroes. All will be well provided for, and all happy and

contented.

We have the highest respect for all the officers of the Bureau in Richmond, from the commanding general down. They have even treated us with great courtesy and kindness; and we are witness to the fact that they discharge their duties with zeal, industry and integrity. Therefore, in calling the Bureau a negro nursery or a congeries of negro nurseries, we intend no disrespect-but only wish to convey to the public a full, accurate and comprehensive idea of the true character of the institution. Besides, we have been one of the nurses ourselves, and would not bring discredit on our own calling.

Moreover, it is our earnest desire and cherished object to aid in restoring kind relations between the South, and at least as much of the North, as will enable us to form new political combinations and new political parties, irrespective of sectional lines. In this way alone can we ever have hereafter any voice or influence in the administration of Federal affairs. Communities and nations are little influenced in their conduct by selfish considerations, more influenced by hatred than by any other motive. They made war upon us and liberated our negroes, with the full knowledge all the while, that they were bringing pecuniary ruin upon themselves. They were actuated solely by sectional hatred and thirst for revenge. That hate and that thirst are not yet satiated, and never will be, so long as we treat them with haughty reserve, or heap upon them indiscriminate abuse and vituperation. They are now making legislative war upon us, more cruel than a war of arms, and almost as costly. They are still willing to ruin themselves, if they can but persecute and punish us. If we would but treat them courteously and fairly, try to make friends of them, instead of increasing their hatred by heaping abuse on them, we might divide and conquer them. This war of words, kept up by those who can no longer fight, is a mere woman's game, unbecoming in men. We never can rise from our abject and fallen condition, so long as the North presents a compact front of opposition to us. By treating all parties at the North alike, by denouncing all, by speaking of their presence among us as a plague-spot and a vile contamination, and by repelling their immigration, we will effectually preserve their compactness, and perpetuate our own bondage. In truth, immigration from the North is the only desirable immigration. We should invite it, and treat their immigrants hospitably, kindly and courteously. Few would come who were not well disposed already towards us, and that few would become Southern in