We had a flare-up with Ranty about the furniture left in the big house [at Pine Grove]. The people broke in on Christmas and took out what we left there, appropriating it to their private uses. I found Frank had the side-board in his new house (the old carriage-house). I told him to give it up and asked where the rest was. Mily had taken the desk, for safe-keeping, and offered to deliver it when wanted, but the bedsteads are not reported. Ranty had locked up the large dining-table in the pease-house. I blew him up for not reporting such things instanter, and hired June to sleep in the big house nights and be responsible for its safe-keeping. Otherwise the doors and windows would soon disappear. The future of our country looks darker than ever. I can't see much prospect of an improvement in the conduct of the war, so long as the mass of our people do not see in slavery the great cause of all the trouble. Neither do I believe that the war will terminate slavery unless the blacks will voluntarily take a part in it. The 1st Regiment is at length filled here, by means of a great deal of coaxing and the abandonment of St. Simon's Island,[95] taking all the men for recruits. They have made two raids upon the Florida coast, where they met with little resistance and accomplished but little. If they can once gain a footing on the mainland and add to their numbers as they advance, they could easily carry all before them. Any other race of men under the sun would do it, but I doubt yet whether there is the requisite amount of pluck in them to fall into such a scheme even when we are ready to lead them. I feel as if this winter were the turning-point of the whole question. FROM W. C. G. _Captain Oliver's, Jan. 4._ Mr. Philbrick has very generously offered to assist three or four of us poorer superintendents in buying plantations. If we do not buy, the occupation of most of us is probably gone. Government will probably retain possession of many plantations from the lack of purchasers,--but they will be the poorer ones and those where the people will be subject to such influences that our purposes will meet with little success. For such plantations superintendents may be needed, but, besides doing little good, their own position I think will be very unpleasant. Nor do I think it unmanly to withdraw from such plantations. The irregular wayward life which the people on such places would probably lead undoubtedly will help to develop their self-reliance, but our style of development--that of regular, persistent industry--is so wholly different, that I doubt the wisdom of attempting to yoke the two styles together. In one point experience confirms what theory would suggest,--that their own increasing comfort or _misery_ will be a far stronger agent in the development of these people than any amount of outside human effort.