One day the Mayor called, together with his city council—a group of fine-looking gentlemen, several of them past middle age. The Mayor himself was a Northern man, who, years ago, had removed to Alabama and identified himself with her interests. Of course, therefore, he joined in the war against the Yankees, and professed no love for them now; but, say what he might, he couldn’t help looking like the shrewd Yankee he was. They were all “ready to accept the new order of things.” That is, they knew they had to submit, and they preferred, by putting a good face on it, to continue in their offices. That anybody wanted “acceptance of the new order of things” to have a wider significance, I failed to discover. The negroes were free; but to expect them to work, or even to behave themselves, without coercive measures, was preposterous. Slavery being destroyed, the Mobilians awaited the lead of the United States in discovering some new mode of constraining service. The idea of service without constraint never entered their heads. Among the callers was a fine, courteous, florid-faced old gentleman, with gray locks carefully collected behind into an antique queue, who began his talk about “this unfortunate class of our population,” by going back to the foundations of things. “You know they are the descendants of Ham, sir, and that service in some form is their heritage. It would be flying in the face of Providence to attempt changing that. Now, sir, there are foolish fellows among them, who, since they have been made free, want to rise from that sphere to which they have been appointed. Of course, they’ll fail; we have no uneasiness on that score; but we are the friends of these people, and we are sorry to see them expose themselves to so much misery in making attempts that we know from the outset must be abortive. Isn’t it better to have the laws in some way take the matter out of their hands and make them work?” I told the old gentleman of what we had seen at St. Helena. He utterly refused to believe that free negroes could be self-supporting. General Saxton had helped them, and stood in the place of a master to them. No negroes were going to work steadily and successfully without the aid of Anglo-Saxon organization and direction. Negro suffrage seemed to all the most revolting of possibilities. They were not willing to think their conquerors could mean to inflict such degradation upon a gallant people. In fact, they wouldn’t—no, they didn’t really think their population _could_ he brought to endure it!