THE WORK OF COMMISSIONERS 111 
were encouraged and invited to trust their millions to its 
keeping. . . . 
And now, taking a retrospective glance over the events 
of the last ten years, in which this Freedmen’s Bank looms 
up conspicuously, we are led to believe that no race or 
kindred among all the generations of men have so thor- 
oughly sounded the depths of the philosophy expressed 
in the prayer, “save me from my friends,” as those “per- 
sons lately held in slavery” at the South, a people over 
whom more crocodile tears have been shed, on whom 
more imposition practiced, and for whom less real sym- 
pathy felt by their professed friends, than any other 
known to history—a people almost literally stabbed under 
the fifth rib with a hug and a salutation, “How is it with 
thee today, my brother?” In regard to this bank, the 
grossest deception was practiced upon them. They were 
told that it was a Government institution, and its solvency 
and safety guaranteed by the United States. Missionaries, 
of whom the chief was Alvord, perambulated the South 
mixing religion, politics, education, and teaching the blacks 
how “to toil and to save,” and then trust their hard 
earned savings to Alvord and his associates to invest them, 
not until, however, they had levied toll for their services 
in bestowing such inestimable benefits, and for their dis- 
interested labors and sacrifices. 
Full of gratitude to the Government for his emancipa- 
tion, the Negro was easily approached by and gave un- 
heeding to any adventurer who declared himself his friend 
and professed a desire to aid his moral, intellectual, and 
social elevation, provided he belonged to the party of the 
administration. He believed and was deceived, trusted and 
was betrayed. Taught, to his ruin and that of the whites 
among whom he lives and moves and has his being, and 
between whom and himself there must be mutual trust 
and confidence before prosperity can be restored to his 
section, to hate and distrust the “old master classes,” he 
is now derided by his old friends for credulity . . . and 
told that those who dragged him out of slavery have by 
that one act cancelled every obligation to deal with him 
on principles of common honesty.