_Boston, Oct. 15._ I have had a letter from Charleston written by a lawyer on behalf of Captain John Fripp and his three daughters! The writer says but little about his legal rights, but appeals to my "sense of justice and generosity," to see if some compromise can't be made. He doesn't say exactly what he wants, but intimates that both parties could profit by such an arrangement and save the vexations of a law suit. I don't see exactly what he has got to give, except his old title, which he probably values a good deal higher than I do. I wrote him telling him I was hampered in acts of "generosity" by the fact that the present title was not in me alone, but that about a dozen other gentlemen were interested, and asked him to make us a definite proposition. You may see by the papers that General Howard is sent by the President to see if he can reconcile the claims of the negroes on Edisto and other islands with those of the former owners who clamor to be reinstated in their position. I guess General Howard will have a tough job. I don't envy him. _Nov. 21._ There is a large number of old planters who are offering their lands at very low rates, and so many tempting chances are offered to Northern men. The tide of emigration southward doesn't yet set very strong, however. I think the great drawback is the feeling that the South is still intolerant of Yankees. The rabble and the young men are still clinging to the hope that they are going to have their own way about managing the nigger, somehow or other, as soon as they get rid of the United States forces, and they know very well that Yankees who come among them will not agree with them about the best way of "making him work," for they won't believe that he will ever work till he is _made_ to. Now, to tell the truth, I don't believe myself that the present generation of negroes will work as they were formerly obliged to, and therefore the race will not produce so much cotton in this generation as they did five years ago. The change is too great a one to be made in a day. It will take many years to make an economical and thrifty man out of a freedman, and about as long to make a sensible and just employer out of a former slaveholder. It is not at all likely that the Southern community will tax itself to educate the negro yet for a good while, and I have my doubts whether the system of education thus far carried on through the benevolence of Northern and English communities can be kept up much longer. It is a laudable and a noble work, but I fear it can't be sustained after the novelty is over. There seems to be a lethargy creeping over our community on this subject, which is very hard to shake off. The feeling is somewhat general that the negro must make the most of his chances and pick up his a, b, c's as he can. Moreover, there is a mass of ignorance in the South under _white_ skins, which is likely to give us more immediate trouble, politically, than the ignorance of the