gentlemen who are opposed to the new conditions resultant from the war which their Hotspur impetuosity and Shylock greed made possible.  In short, these gentlemen comprise the moneyed class.  They are the gentlemen who are hastening the conflict of labor and capital in the South.  And, when the black laborer and the white laborer come to their senses, join issues with the common enemy and pitch the tent of battle, then will come the tug of war.

But the large land-owners and tradesmen of the South will not in the future belong exclusively to the class of persons I have described.  On the contrary this class of hereditary land-owners will be sensibly diminished and their places be taken by successful recruits from the ranks of small white and black farmers.  Indeed, I confess, I strongly incline to the belief that the black man of the South will eventually become the large land-holding class, and, therefore, the future tyrants of labor in that section.  All the indications strongly point to such a possibility.  It is estimated that, already, the colored people own, in the cotton growing states, 2,680,800 acres, the result of seventeen years of thrift, economy, and judicious management; while in the State of Georgia alone they own, it is reliably estimated, 680,000 acres of land, and pay taxes on $9,000,000 worth of property.  Dr. Alexander Crummell, a most learned African, in a very interesting pamphlet drawn out by the malicious misstatements of Dr. Tucker, before referred to by me, makes the following deductions and statements, to wit: 

Let me suggest here another estimate of this landed property of the Negro, acquired since emancipation.  Taking the old slave States in the general, there has been a large acquisition of land in each and all of them.  In the State of Georgia, as we have just seen, it was 680,000 acres.  Let us put the figure as low as 400,000 for each State—­for the purchase of farm lands has been everywhere a passion with the freedman—­this 400,000 acres multiplied into 14, i.e. the number of the chief Southern States, shows an aggregate of 5,600,000 acres of land, the acquisition of the black race in less than twenty years.

But Dr. Tucker will observe a further fact of magnitude in this connection:  It is the increased PRODUCTION which has been developed on the part of the freedman since emancipation.  I present but one staple, and for the reason that it is almost exclusively the result of $1.

I will take the five years immediately preceding the late civil war and compare them with the five years preceeding the last year’s census-taking; and the contrast in the number of cotton-bales produced will show the industry and thrift of the black race as a consequent on the gift of freedom: 

Years Bales
1857 2,939,519