Open Letter & Report: Rev. R.L. Dabney's Letter to the Head of the Freedmen's Bureau - Part 4d of 4
December 14, 2020
Dear Ms. Lunelle,
On Sunday morning, December 13, 2020, with the planned removal of the Crown Jewel of the City of Asheville, North Carolina (my hometown); the Cenotaph of the Honorable Governor Zebulon Baird Vance, had the scalawags conniving the plans of sacrilege, now turning to what the cost of destruction would be, heavy on my mind.
However, another call for help had come down the road from the rural and peaceful Town of Marshall, North Carolina, where a minion of Satan had sleeked in the dark of the night onto the beautiful Historic Courthouse grounds, and meticulously removed a commemorative plaque to the Honorable General Robert E. Lee from the base of the Cenotaph. It looked like the works of someone of notable expertise.
I would don the uniform of the Southern soldier, and post the Southern Cross in the public easement of the Courthouse grounds to the sounds of God bless you HK, thank you, Mr. Edgerton, we love you HK. And time does not permit some of the stories they would tell; maybe at another time.
HK Edgerton, Marshall, NC, December 15, 2020
To Major General Howard
_________
Chief of the Freedmen's Bureau, Washington
Another of your difficulties will be found in the enormous misconceptions which now fill the minds of the freedmen. The mischief of one of these I have already indicated. It suited your purposes, during the season of strife, diligently to teach the negro that the white people of the South were their oppressors and enemies. Well. sir, they have learned your lessons effectually, and will not speedily unlearn it.
The consequence is that you have thereby stripped yourself of the aid of eight millions of white people in your arduous task, and these, the white people among whom the larger part of the freedmen still live, among whom alone are to be found persons familiar with African character, and among whom alone has there ever been, or will there ever be an ingenuous personal affection for individuals of that race. We have lost the ability to guide, counsel, or instruct them.
The larger part of those evidently confound liberty with license, and to them, liberty means living without earning a living. Accustomed to see their masters performing little manual labor (because they were unnecessarily occupied with the more important, and often more arduous labor of superintendence when he has nobody to superintend.) Your first task, sir, will be to convince them of this mistake, and as I have proved, you are bound to do this, without causing or permitting them to suffer any painful consequences of this error.
Your emissaries, armed and clerical, diligently taught them that all the labor rendered by them in servitude was uncompensated; and that every dollar of the proceeds of that labor taken by the landholder, was a robbery from them. (A good and certain home and livelihood at all times, sustenance for their families, provisions for their decrepitude, and maintenance for those they left behind them are, in the eyes of these philosophers, no compensation at all, even for that labor which is least skilled; because I presume, they were so secure and regular.)
And it is the established doctrine of the Abolition school, that, while labor is entitled to wages, capital is not; in accordance with which truth, those good people, as is well known, lend out their money for nothing, and pay away the whole profits of their costly factories in wages to operatives.) The consequence of this doctrine among the freedmen is this: They argue that all the property in this country being the fruit of their unrequited labor. they may now help themselves to a fair return, whenever and however they can. Hence a habit of what we old-fashioned Southerners used to call "theft," which renders them of rather doubtful utility as hired laborers.
You will have a great deal of trouble, sir, in correcting this mistake; and again, I urge that you are bound to do this, without permitting or causing the freedmen to taste any bitter consequences. For, I reason of this as of all other misconceptions which they learned of you, that you are solemnly bound to not let them suffer for what was your error. What, will you punish them for believing you? It would be a monstrous iniquity. You have this task then, gently to educate them out of this innocent mistake of stealing everything which comes to their hands, by "moral suasion," without stocks, whipping posts, jails, or any such harsh measures; and meantime, to generously repair all the evil consequences of those thefts, to themselves or others, out of your inexhaustible pockets.
Do you not think, sir, that to effect, this the "schoolmaster" will have to go "abroad" pretty considerably? Thus one mischievous mistake chases another through their ignorant minds, fostered by designing and malicious men; and each one is a fatal obstacle in that path of sober industry where alone their welfare is to be found. You have a great task, sir, in causing them to unlearn these misconceptions. How many embarrassing self-contradictions your people will have to make in performing that task, it is not for me to indicate.
Another of your difficulties will be found in the necessity for the displacement of a very large part of the black labor and population in many districts of the South. My own county may be taken as a fair example of other parts of Virginia. There were in it eight thousand blacks. Our wisest men of business are unanimous in declaring under the new system of hiring labor, the industrial pursuits of the county cannot employ profitably more than one third (some say not more than one-fifth) of the former labor, at prices which would give subsistence to the blacks. And their opinion is manifestly correct, because every businessman who is questioned, individually, declares that he is constrained to reduce the labor employed by him in such ratio.
Now, this fact is not cited by me to argue from it the superior economy and productiveness of the former system, in that it was able to employ, upon the same soil, in a remunerative manner, three times or five times as much labor. (And that the employment of it was remunerative is proved beyond a cavil by the prosperity of employers and laborers.) The only use I make of the fact is-to show that two-thirds of this black population should at once emigrate; or it becomes unemployed, destitute, suffering, and vicious.
But the local attachments of the African are predominant; and that spirit of adventure and enterprise, which carries the Virginian to the front tide of every pioneer population, is as foreign to his nature as frost is to his fervent native clime. The temper of the negro is to do just what he has been use to, and nothing else. Here, sir, you have a problem which will tax your ingenuity and force; how to displace two-thirds of the half-million of blacks in Virginia to a new soil, when they do not wish to go, have no capital, and are deficient in knowledge and thrift; and to do this without a result of widespread destitution, domestic distress, disease, and death.
But, perhaps, the greatest of your difficulties is the one which has been hitherto least appreciated - the novelty of your task.
God bless you!
Your brother,
HK
Chairman of the Board of Advisors Emeritus of the Southern Legal Resource Center
Member of Save Southern Heritage
Kentucky Colonel
Honorary Scot of Austin
Recipient of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis Medal
Member of the Historic March Across Dixie 20 Mile Club
Honorary Life Member of the North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia Orders of the Confederate Rose
President of Southern Heritage 411
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