The Daily Dispatch: March 22, 1865., [Electronic resource]

A great deal of superfluous enthusiasm is wasted by the Northern newspaper correspondents over the fine qualities and attributes of the negro race as it is found at the South. All the complimentary things they say of these Africans afford us no new ideas, and, if their object is to irritate and provoke, fall far short of the mark.--These creatures were brought here barbarians; such as they are now, they have become under the mild and refining influence of Southern servitude. Whilst the Northern African, according to the confession of the New York Tribune's Charleston correspondent, is inferior to the Southern African; whilst, under the influence of freedom, he has become demoralized and impoverished, and is gradually relapsing to primitive barbarism; here, under the influence of slavery, he has ascended in the scale of civilization and Christianity. There has never been that intense contempt of the negro in the South which everywhere in the North finds expression in coarse ridicule of his color and physical conformation.

He has always had our sympathies, as well as shared our bread, and there is even a tie of affection and confidence between the white and African members of Southern households which is not to be found either in the North, or in the relations of employer and laborer in any other part of the world. The consequence is, that the African in the South, though still a child in judgment and impulses, is far superior in moral qualities not only to his own race in free latitudes, but to many of other races who have been ravaging our country. A larger number of them have been converted to Christianity in the slaveholding States than all the conversions which the whole missionary enterprise of England and America have accomplished in the whole world. Our enemies, therefore, need not expect us to be either astonished or mortified by what seems new to them in the character of Southern negroes.--The Northern and English slave- traders brought them to us savages; they are now civilized and Christian. Have we not done better by them than those who brought them here? It is sad to think what a change may be wrought by negro emancipation in those sections which have fallen into abolition hands. If, with all the Yankee teachers imported for their instruction, and all the appliances of a pseudo-philanthropy for their improvement, they do not deteriorate in both moral and physical qualities, we have read the history of mankind and of the African race to little purpose.