The general superintendent of Port Royal Wand said to me,—­“We have to restrain rather than to encourage the negroes to take land for cotton.”  The general superintendent of Hilton Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near the camps.  A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers.  He had charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the trees for that purpose.

The laborers do less work, perhaps, than a Yankee would think they might do; but they do about as much as he himself would do, after a residence of a few years in the same climate, and when he had ceased to work under the influence of Northern habits.  Northern men have sometimes been unjust to the South, when comparing the results of labor in the different sections.  God never intended that a man should toil under a tropical sun with the same energy and constancy as in our bracing latitude.  There has been less complaint this year than last of “a pain in the small of the back,” or of “a fever in the head,”—­in other words, less shamming.  The work has been greatly deranged by the draft, some features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military authorities.  The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by the women, children, and disabled men.  It has been suggested that field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no honest work is dishonorable in man or woman.  But this matter may be left to regulate itself.  Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social development.  Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss peasantry.  Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not yet fitted for the needle or the book.

The negroes were also showing their capacity to organize labor and apply capital to it.  Harry, to whom I referred in my second report, as “my faithful guide and attendant, who had done for me more service than any white man could render,” with funds of his own, and some borrowed money, bought at the recent tax-sales a small farm of three hundred and thirteen acres for three hundred and five dollars.  He was to plant sixteen and a half acres of cotton, twelve and a half of corn, and one and a half of potatoes.  I rode through his farm on the 10th of April, my last