“Possibly, at first. But remember, these people are intoxicated with their first draught of freedom. Wait a little while, and as they get settled, and see something of the rewards of steady industry, they’ll be as eager to accumulate and save, as any other class of laborers.” “Not a bit of it. I tell you, niggers are niggers. You’re talking about a different class of laborers altogether. That’s always the way. You know, and every Northern man knows, that we have been the best friends the nigger ever had. Yet this is the way they treat us. They’ll work for you a little while, and then they’ll serve you in the same style.” An old negro on the platform, at the very moment, was droning out a curious commentary on the Alabamian’s complaints: “One-half of dese niggers,” said he to the brakeman, “one-half of dese niggers ought to be killed, any how. Dey don’t do nuffin but hang roun’ and steal from dem dat work.” His old brass watch, it seems, had been stolen, and he was scowling through his brass-mounted goggles in the direction in which he supposed the thief had gone. I told the Alabamian of the persistent labors of the Sea Island negroes. He utterly refused to believe that I had not been deceived. Finally, the crucial test was mentioned—the balances to their credit in the National Bank.[53] “Well, I don’t understand it. There were never any such niggers around in our country.” And with that he suddenly ended the talk. ----- Footnote 52: Mr. Simmons said in the Georgia Convention: “Let us repudiate only under the lash and the application of military power, and then, as soon as we are an independent sovereignty, restored to our equal rights and privileges in the Union, let us immediately call another Convention and resume the debt.” Footnote 53: Some weeks before this, on the 17th of September, 1865, the balances to the credit of the Sea Island negroes, in their National Bank, amounted to $195,587 08. CHAPTER XXXVI. Montgomery—The Lowest Phase of Negro Character—Politics and Business. From Atlanta I took the railway for Montgomery, Alabama. We had been traveling, thus far, in third-class passenger cars. Now we came down to box freight cars, around the sides of which a board bench was placed for the accommodation of such passengers as cared to sit down. * * * * * “’Ere’s your Cincinnati and Nashville papers, Gazette, Commercial, Press, and Times! All about the execution of Champ Ferguson!” “Yes, and I wish it was all about the execution of the scoundrels that tried him.” The scene was a box-car on the West Point (Georgia) Railroad; the speaker an Alabama planter, on his way home from Atlanta.