and I always give them that opportunity when they want it.  My idea of the adjustment in the Mississippi Valley, seeing what I can make from the mercantile portion of my business, is that it is simply my revenue that I get from the rent of my land as an investment on my capital; and whenever a negro can get his own merchant in New Orleans—­a number of them have very good factors in New Orleans and ship their cotton direct—­I encourage it.  When one negro wants to help out another, I give him the privilege of doing it and encourage it.  There are several negroes, a great many, not a few in Chicot County to-day who have their own factors in New Orleans, ship their own goods, and receive their own accounts of sales.

     Q. They are not owners of alluvial lands? 
     —­A.  They are not owners at all; they are tenants.

Q. I suppose some time they will be liable to make some accumulations, and they will now and then own a plantation?  —­A.  I do know of one instance on the river below Vicksburg where the old property of Mr. Davis was bought by a former slave of his.

     Q. Is that the only instance? 
     —­A.  The only instance I know of.

Q. One question we have been accustomed to put is as to the actual personal feeling that exists between the laborers and capitalists of different parts of the country.  What is the feeling between the laborers, colored and white, and the owners of the land and of capital at the South?  —­A.  I confine my replies to my own section, because I am not familiar with the others.  I have answered that question in the written answers.  The feeling is harmonious and good, as I have expressed it there.  The negro naturally looks to the planter for advice and for assistance, and the planter looks to his laborers for the development of his property.  Consequently their interests are identical and their feelings good.

Q. You have alluded once or twice to the pressure of outside, and I suppose Northern, opinion; I assume that you mean political opinion in the past and the desirability that it should cease.  What is the fact as to a progressive disintegration of the solid Republican or solid negro vote of the South?  What are the chances of its dividing, and of the white vote dividing?  We hear now of a “solid South,” colored on the one side and white on the other.  What prospect is there of a division in that regard; to what extent does it exist, or is it going on?  —­A.  The negroes of the South are already divided in their votes.  There are a great many who vote with the proprietors of the properties.  There are instances where they vote with what they call their Republican friends.  A few years ago in the South any man who was an escaped convict from one of your penitentiaries here who would come down to that country and tell the negroes that he was one of General Grant’s soldiers, and fought to free him, would vote the last one out;