The Negro is neither a beggar, nor a pauper, nor a tramp; and if honestly dealt with, he can make his own way.  Where they are idle and profligate, execute the law vigorously against them, and they will approve and aid in the work.  We can lift them up, or cast them down.  For one, I think we owe them a debt of gratitude and impartial justice for their faithful conduct during the war; and when disposed to criticise and reproach them for not coming in all things up to your sentimental notions, just put yourself in their place.  Then you will, if your scales are true and your weights just, settle the question with little difficulty.  I cannot serve my readers better, perhaps, than by quoting the words of the Rev. Dr. Callaway, lately Professor in Emory College, Oxford, Ga., and new President of Paine Institute, Augusta, Ga., a native of that State, and to the manor born.  In a late address, he says:  “We have spoken of the Negro as related to the conduct of the war, but it remains to be said that, in his relation to us as a friend during that period, and to our wives and children as guardian, the testimony of his fidelity is on the lips of every surviving soldier.  It is easy to conjecture how, with a race less loyal to home and patron, the testimony in the case might have been a narrative of lawlessness and license.  What he refrained from, therefore, is to his credit.  But in the four years of darkness and demoralization, when, besides those of military age, every boy whose muscles were equal to the support of a musket, and every old man with vigor enough to mark time, was called to the front, the Negro, commanding as a patriarch and reverent as a priest, kept sacred vigil at our homes.  Besides this, with a foresight not developed for himself or his family, but evoked by virtue of his office, and the piteous destitution of our loved ones, he provided for their wants.  ‘They were a-hungered, and he fed them.’  What he did is to his honor.  What we refrain from in our place of power as the superior race, shall be to our credit; what we do in return shall be in proof of our appreciation.  The conduct of the Negro during the war proves him kindly, temperate, trustworthy; his conduct since the war reveals in him considerateness, purpose, capacity, an order of growing good qualities.  During the war his inferior courage, it may be assumed, inured to his superior serviceableness, his fears giving counsel to his courtesy and care.  So set it down, if you will, though the logic is as lame as the charge is ungrateful.”

This testimony upon the character, temper and adaptability of colored people is all the more valuable because Dr. Marshall not only treats the question from a Christian standpoint, but because his intimate acquaintance with the subject adds weight and authority to his opinion.

In the same strain, Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, President of Emory College, in Georgia, a man of the largest culture, Christian intelligence and progressive ideas, says, in his masterful work, Our Brother in Black, His Freedom and His Future (p. 194):