Man is distributed throughout the earth in various conditions: in temperate zones he presents the civilization of Europe and America; in torrid zones the ignorance and nakedness of the African. It was out of the stew-pan of the equator that the negro was fished--with all the features and instincts of a barbarism, from which he is slowly emerging--by cruel and irresponsible traders. The religious ideals of the negro are vague and indeterminate. They are intensely superstitious, and believe, as their ancestors before them, in sorcery and witchcraft. Although their powers of origination are inefficient, they readily imitate the manners, customs and idiosyncracies of their masters, and frequently exhibit a superficial polish. They are emotional rather than practical in their religion. They are not naturally revengeful or vindictive, and they have shown a sentiment of gratitude that greatly endeared them to their owners. When war was flagrant, and they felt that it was waged for their emancipation--that the institution of slavery was menaced by Federal arms, in unnumbered instances they held in sacred trust millions of dollars worth of property and the lives of thousands of defenseless human beings, who held over them, without challenge, the rod of domestic government. Under all exasperating causes up to and during the war, hundreds of slaves remained loyal to the interests and authority of their masters. Conditions, however, highly inflammatory, developed passions that made them brutish, dishonest and cruel. Their emotional religion and their prejudices acted concurrently. The carpet-bagger found these unlighted fagots distributed everywhere throughout the South; he had only to entice them by delusive promises; he had only to say to them, "Will you be slaves, or freedmen?"--to put into their hands a new commission, and into their hearts a new faith, differentiated from the old in order to kindle the fires of hate and revenge. The Freedman's Bureau in the South was the nineteenth century Apocalypse--a revelation truly to the poor negroes, who had devoutly longed for its coming. The event, they thought, would be distinguished by their sudden enrichment; its huge commissariat would leak from every pore with the oil of fatness; officials, patient and sympathetic, would stand at its portals to distribute pensions and subsistence, and the star-spangled banner waving from the masthead would bow its welcome to all who came. Something for nothing was their great law of reciprocity. Four million slaves fastened themselves like barnacles upon this odious institution, an extremely partisan agency, deadly and inimical--hostile to the peace of the South and the interests of her people. These slaves, maddened by their misery, looked back upon the ruined plantations, and laughed when they felt that the whirlwind of retribution had swept over the land.