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.