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First. The founding of the Freedman's Bank in the city of Washington.
The following facts are worthy of notice:
(a) This bank was opened in 1865 and closed in 1874.
(b) No less than 61,000 Freedmen were the depositors in this bank.
(c) The depositors were men and women in every Southern State from Maryland to Louisiana.
(d) The sum total of moneys deposited amounted to over $56,000,000. All which evidences character, industry, moral energy, and the capability for self-support.
The destruction of this Bank, through the rascality of white men, was a great calamity; but it did not quench the ambition of the race. Since then other notable demonstrations of manly power have been shown by the freedmen.
Second. The uprising of thousands in the Southwest, and their emigration with great loss of property, health, and life to the West, was not the act of degenerate beings, but of high-souled and aspiring men—albeit they were poor and ignorant. They were cheated wholesale out of their wages by the very men—Dr. Tucker's neighbors—who, he tells us, "know the Negroes and love them" with the "tender remembrances of childhood!" These men, owners of wide, uncultivated tracts of land, refused to sell these Freedmen the smallest patches, in order to keep them perpetual serfs of the soil. So, in deep indignation, they shook the dust of the South from their feet and carried their families into free Kansas, to secure freeholds, liberty, and education for their children.
Third. Just now a fact of magnitude invites the attention of the friends of the Negro. I refer to the projected railroad, already begun by the black citizens of North Carolina.
