It has been naturally supposed that the bitterest drop in all the bitter cup of humiliation for these haughty South Carolinians, must be the necessity of accepting alms from the Government they had been seeking to overthrow. But the ingenious high priestesses of secession regard the matter in no such light. The Dominie found a number of them living solely on Government rations. He hastened to offer them assistance. Their Northern relatives had already repeatedly volunteered similar offers, but they refused them all, and persisted in living on the bacon and hard bread issued by the United States Commissary. They explained that they preferred to make “the Washington Government” support them. It had robbed them of all they had, and now the very least it could do was to pay their expenses.[13] Every penny of cost to which they put it was so much got back from the fortunes of which it had robbed them, by waging this wicked war for their subjugation! Doesn’t somebody think it a shame that these repentant South Carolinians should be treated with so little magnanimity as the Government is displaying; and that Northern Abolitionists should quit watching them critically, and “mind their own business?” Already, a few of the South Carolinians talk thus; and in a few months, if freedom of expression is allowed them, we shall see much of the old vituperation of the Government and of the North. ----- Footnote 12: A proposition has since been made to re-establish it, as an organ of the freedmen—to be edited by negroes! Footnote 13: The same idea prevailed among some of the Richmond Rebels. A Richmond letter to the Boston _Commonwealth_, dated 30th June, describing the scenes at the points where rations were gratuitously issued to the destitute, says: “‘We are all beggars, now!’ I heard one of them say, apologetically. But most of the high-born were coarse and imperious. ‘This is not begging,’ one of the most inveterate beggars said. ‘It is taking from the United States Government a very small portion of what it owes us.’ ‘As long as the Yankees have taken possession of Richmond, of course it’s their place to feed us,’ more than one said. To the few who gave thanks, and to the many who cursed, all the Commissions gave largely, for several weeks.” CHAPTER IX. “Unionism”—Black and White, in Charleston and Through South Carolina. A very few Union men could be seen. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a few could be found less treasonable than the majority of South Carolinians.