[16] The writer knew personally of a number of these schools, which began first as Sunday-schools immediately after the war. Indeed, under the inspiration of a pious lady, the services of all the young people in the neighborhood were called into requisition in the spring of 1865, to help teach a Sunday-school for the Negro children, who were at first taught their letters in the sand. A little later, through the kindness of friends at the North, enough money was secured to build a school-house, which still stands and was used at first for a Sunday-school and afterward for a day-school. [17] See Report of Congressional Committee in Government Ku-Klux Trials. [18] See “Reconstruction in the South During the War.” [19] See Congressional debates and questions put to witnesses before the various High Commissions organized by Congress for the inquisition of affairs at the South, in 1865 and 1866. [20] See Mr. Lincoln’s letter to Governor B. F. Hahn, January 13, 1864. This was at a time when it was necessary to have 10,000 votes to reconstruct Louisiana. [21] See chapter on “Disfranchisement of the Negro.” [22] See “Noted Men on the Solid South,” p. 427. [23] Governor Chamberlain has recently written an open letter to Mr. James Bryce in which he espouses warmly the views held generally by the Southern whites on this subject. [24] See debates in Congress, April 3, 1839; January 23, 1842; seq.: when John Quincy Adams presented a petition to Congress from Haverhill, Mass., praying that Congress would “immediately adopt measures possible to dissolve the union of the States.” [25] For years, one of the popular paper-carriers of Richmond was a certain Lewis Lindsay who, during the early period of reconstruction, had been one of the most violent of the Negro leaders, and became noted for a speech in which he declared that he wished to wade in white blood up to his knees. In Charleston, another leader, equally violent, later sold fish in the market, and among his customers were the very persons toward whom he had once been so outrageous. In New Orleans, another was a hostler. Such instances could readily be multiplied. CHAPTER III ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND ASPECT, AS SHOWN BY STATISTICS Having in the two previous papers undertaken to show the relation between the whites of the South and the Negroes at the time of the abolition of slavery, and having traced the change in that relation and pointed out the mistakes which, in the writer’s opinion, were mainly responsible for whatever trouble has since arisen between them, it now remains to see what the present condition is; how far it is attributable to those causes, and what promise the future holds of amendment.