Another delegation consisted of blacks from the country, wearing coarse negro clothes instead of broadcloth, less graceful in their bearing, and less cultivated in their talk. Their old masters were abusing them, were whipping those who said they thought they were free, and were doing all they could to retain them in a state of actual, if not also nominal, slavery. Some were endeavoring to earn a living by hauling wood to the country towns, and they complained that their old masters went with cunning stories to the military authorities and contrived to have them stopped. Others had tales of atrocities to tell, whippings and cutting off of ears and the like, for the crimes of going where they pleased and assuming to act as freemen. All the negroes knew that the North had triumphed in the war, and that they were by consequence free; but the white masters didn’t yet seem to understand it. Some of these men appeared patient enough under their wrongs; others bore themselves angrily, and were full of revengeful thoughts. A slave insurrection is not probable; but where whites and negroes are alike unarmed, and the negroes are nearly or quite equal to the white population, there may be such a thing as goading the patient bearer of burdens into revolt. If so, let the masters beware. On the levees of the Mississippi any man can loose the floods of half a continent; but it takes many men to confine them again. Few of the negroes, and, indeed, few of the whites, spoke of any settled arrangements between the late slaves and the late masters, on the basis of the freedom of the blacks, and their consequent right to wages. Wherever any bargains had been made, they seemed to be such as would virtually establish the Mexican peonage instead of Southern slavery. Negroes were hired at nominal monthly wages, “with board;” and whatever debts they incurred in getting their clothing were to be subsequently “worked out” at the same rates. The result was, of course, certain to be that the masters would encourage the negroes to run in debt; and, this done, would hold them forever by a constantly strengthening chain.[20]