GENERAL BASIL W. DUKE

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almost as many ex-Southern soldiers bearing the title of "general" as there are to-day in the ranks of the "United Confederate Veterans."

A multitude, also, went upon the same mission to the cities of the border, St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati, and not a few continued their flight as far north as New York. Quite a number remained permanently and were successful in their adopted abodes, but the majority returned, with the returning prosperity of the South, to their early homes.

Not only was there a general decline in values, disorganization of business, and stagnation of industry throughout all the subjugated region, but the lack of competent labour, as well as of money, intensified all else that was unfortunate and made the situation almost desperate. The South, before the war, had been distinctly an agricultural country; that interest greatly predominated all others in every community. For many years after the war, much the larger proportion of the population depended upon agriculture as a means of support. The labour employed for the cultivation of the cereals, as well as the cotton, sugar, and tobacco crops, was chiefly negro labour. It was not habitual for white men, with the exception of the small farmers who tilled comparatively scanty acreage, to work in the fields. But the demoralization of the negro as a labourer began with his enfranchisement, and was completed by his introduction into politics. It is to be doubted whether, even if the negroes had remained in slavery and could have been compelled to stay upon the plantations, they could for many years at least have been employed as profitably and as numerously as in the ante bellum days, for the reason that the planters were otherwise so straightened, so lacking in facilities, that it might not have been possible to keep them all employed. It must also be considered that men     white or black     who have been trained under one system do not readily adapt themselves to another.

But at this date, the negro, intoxicated with sudden freedom and excited by strange hopes, had little desire to do any work at all, even the most necessary, and his labour was no longer reliable.

During all this period and until the beginning of the administration of Mr. Hayes, the Southern people were treated as if

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