to reduce taxation and expenditures, and would attack the national debt, if they saw any reason to believe repudiation possible. They will continue to assert the inferiority of the African; and they would to-day, if possible, precipitate the United States into a foreign war, believing they could then reassert and obtain their independence. They will, most of them, take any oaths you may cause to be adopted, and break them immediately, and without scruple. In one word, this people have placed themselves in resolute antagonism to the North, and _this_ generation, at least, will always hate the Northern people, while the boys are being educated to the same idea. … “On the whole, looking at the affair from all sides, it amounts to just this: if the Northern people are content to be ruled over by the Southerners, they will continue in the Union; if not, the first chance they get, they will rise again.”[28] Other testimony is in harmony. For instance, a trustworthy traveller, who has recently traversed the Gulf States, thus writes in a private letter to myself:-- “The former masters exhibit a most cruel, remorseless, and vindictive spirit toward the colored people. In parts where there are no Union soldiers I saw colored women treated in the most outrageous manner. They have no rights that are respected. They are killed, and their bodies thrown into ponds or mud-holes. They are mutilated by having ears and noses cut off.” Such a people already talk of repudiating the national debt. To the question, “Would it be safe to trust white men at the South with the power to repudiate the national debt?” a person in gray uniform at once replied: “Repudiate? I should hope they would. I’m whipped, and I’ll own it; but I’m not so fond of a whipping that I’m going to pay a man’s expenses while he gives it to me. Of course there are not ten men in the whole South that wouldn’t repudiate.” Such is the spirit of these States. But a candidate for Congress in Virginia undertook to speak for the Rebel States.