“I am not so sure about that. You don’t know the positions of many of the leading men here, and some of them, by professing to be your friends, might easily deceive you.” “No, sir; I ’sure you we knows our friends,” responded the same coal-black speaker. “Perhaps you in the cities may. I am not disposed, myself, to doubt it. But here is a great mass of ignorant field hands from the plantations. They are scattered all over Georgia, and they don’t have the advantages or the opportunities of learning which you have. What is to prevent them from voting just as their old masters may tell them?” “Oh, we’ll tell them how to vote, sir; we have means of reaching them; and _they’ll follow us sooner than they will their old masters or any white man_.” “Possibly; perhaps even probably. But neither they, nor even you, are familiar with political history, the organization of parties, the antecedents of parties or of leaders; and you are very liable to be deceived. How do we know that, in your ignorance, you will not be tricked into voting the slavery ticket, under some pleasant and deceptive name, rather than the freedom ticket?” “Mr. Judge, we always knows who’s our friends and who isn’t. We knows the difference between the Union ticket and the Rebel ticket. We may not know all about all the men that’s on it; but we knows the difference between the Union and the Rebel parties. Yes, sir; we knows that much better than you do! Because, sir, some of our people stand behind these men at the table, and hear ’em talk; we see ’em in the house and by the wayside; and we _know_ ’em from skin to core, better than you do or can do, till you live among ’em as long, and see as much of ’em as we have.” “I have no doubt of your competency to take care of yourselves in Savannah,” said the Chief Justice; “but what your friends at the North are afraid of, is, that your people in the interior will not know how to tell whom to vote for, for the present at least, and that in their bewilderment they will vote just as their old masters tell them they ought.” “I tell you, Mr. Judge,” said the preacher, “we can reach every colored man in the State; and they would rather trust intelligent men of their own color than any white man. They’ll vote the ticket we tell them is the ticket of our friends; and, as fast as they can, they’ll learn to read and judge for themselves.” “Sir,” he continued, “the white population of Georgia is five hundred thousand, and, of that number, fifty thousand, or one in ten, can’t read and write. Give us three years to work in, and, among our younger adults, the proportion who can not read and write will be no greater. But, sir, these whites don’t read and write because they don’t want to; our people don’t, because the law and public feeling were against it. The ignorant whites had every chance to learn, but didn’t; we had every chance to remain ignorant, and many of us learned in spite of them.”