the freedmen were assured of the direct protection of the national government. Whenever they are in trouble, they raise their eyes up to that power, and although they may suffer, yet, as long as that power is visibly present, they continue to hope. But when State authority in the south is fully restored, the federal forces withdrawn, and the Freedmen's Bureau abolished, the colored man will find himself turned over to the mercies of those whom he does not trust. If then an attempt, is made to strip him again of those rights which he justly thought he possessed, he will be apt to feel that he can hope for no redress unless he procure it himself. If ever the negro is capable of rising, he will rise then. Men who never struck a blow for the purpose of gaining their liberty, when they were slaves, are apt to strike when, their liberty once gained, they see it again in danger. However great the patience and submissiveness of the colored race may be, it cannot be presumed that its active participation in a war against the very men with whom it again stands face to face, has remained entirely without influence upon its spirit.
What a general insurrection of the negroes would result in, whether it would be easy or difficult to suppress it, whether the struggle would be long or short, what race would suffer most, are questions which will not be asked by those who understand the problem to be, not how to suppress a negro insurrection, but how to prevent it. Certain it is, it would inflict terrible calamities upon both whites and blacks, and present to the world the spectacle of atrocities which ought to be foreign to civilized nations. The negro, in his ordinary state, is docile and good-natured; but when once engaged in a bloody business, it is difficult to say how far his hot impulses would carry him; and as to the southern whites, the barbarous scenes the country has witnessed since the close of the rebellion, indicate the temper with which they would fight the negro as an insurgent. It would be a war of extermination, revolting in its incidents, and with ruin and desolation in its train. There may be different means by which it can be prevented, but there is only one certain of effect: it is, that the provocations be avoided which may call it forth.
But even if it be prevented by other means, it is not the only danger which a reactionary movement will bring upon the south. Nothing renders society more restless than a social revolution but half accomplished. It naturally tends to develop its logical consequences, but is hindered by adverse agencies which work in another direction; nor can it return to the point from which it started. There are, then, continual vibrations and fluctuations between two opposites which keep society in the nervous uneasiness and excitement growing from the lingering strife between the antagonistic tendencies. All classes of society are intensely dissatisfied with things as they are. General explosions may be prevented, but they are always imminent. This state of uncertainty impedes all successful working of the social forces; people, instead of devoting themselves with confidence and steadiness to solid pursuits, are apt to live from hand to mouth, or to indulge in fitful experiments; capital ventures out but with great timity; the lawless elements of the community take advantage of the general confusion and dissatisfaction, and society drifts into anarchy. There is probably at the present moment no country in the civilized world which contains such an accumulation of anarchical elements as the south. The strife of the antagonistic tendencies here described is aggravated by the passions inflamed and the general impoverishment brought about by a long and exhaustive war, and the south will have to suffer the evils of anarchical disorder until means are found to effect a final settlement of the labor question in accordance with the logic of the great revolution.
THE TRUE PROBLEM.—DIFFICULTIES AND REMEDIES.
In seeking remedies for such disorders, we ought to keep in view, above all, the nature of the problem which is to be solved. As to what is commonly termed
