The African was found to be strong-bodied, and through and by means of his diligent labor the cities and lands of the South had been built up and tilled respectively. The "poor white trash," as Caucasian laborers were termed, were not so well qualified to toil under a semi-tropical sky, and extract the wealth from the soil in the same degree. No part of the United States was so rich when the war began as these States. They had amassed an immense horde of silver and of gold by means of the labors of the slaves; although all that precious metal was thrown away upon cannon and gunpowder, and all other necessaries of war, and the cause for which they fought was lost after all. Still, the fact remains that the South had to a great extent been built up by the labor of the hardy and diligent African, who was so very useful and valuable that "Secessia" struggled on for four long years to retain the colored race in slavery, and even to make slavery itself the chief corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy. But crime could not be allowed to go unpunished, and the oppressed African was entitled to his liberty and his rights. With the tramp, tramp, tramp of so many refugees from the Southern States upon their pilgrim way to Kansas and other Northern States, the leading white men of the country that they left behind at last began to open their eyes to the mischief which they and their minions had already done, and they saw that they had lost the confidence of the colored race. As from forty to sixty thousand men, women and children had gone to Kansas alone, and immense numbers had emigrated to other Northern States, both far and near, the leading men in the deserted sections now began to wonder to what extent this thing would grow. They saw that if things went on at this rate the Southern States would become depopulated, or at least as destitute of inhabitants as they were upon the landing of Columbus. Something must be done to stop at once this great rush of wronged and oppressed men for other States, where they could live in safety and freedom; and not only must the shot-gun policy of the Southerners be brought to an end, but that system of cheating and robbery, also, whereby white men had beat the colored ones out of their full share of the crops, on the plantations, and defrauded them in every way under the so-called "Credit System." It was most unmanly, cowardly, and even shameful to the last degree, for wise and intelligent white men to thus rob and plunder the oppressed and uneducated African. Such a devilish policy was simply adding insult to injury. Never was a more savage thing done through the wickedness of the human race since the creation. It now became the policy of all thinking ex-rebels to put on their thinking caps, and study a better system than such sheer dishonesty.