|
On Monday evening last, we, in company with other gentlemen, attended at
the African school room, by invitation, for the purpose of hearing an
address which was delivered to the freedmen by Lewis Ivey, a very
intelligent man of their own color, who was formerly a favorite slave of
Judge George H. Gilmer, of Pittsylvania county. The attendance of
freedmen was quite large, and we were agreeably surprised at the correct
views which the speaker seemed to have of the condition of the freedmen,
as well as the facility with which he expressed them in language which
bore evidence of far more mental training than is usually found among men
of his class. His address was delivered with an air of earnestness and
truth, and marked with a degree of sound common sense that commended it
to the earnest consideration of his numerous auditors, who seemed to
appreciate it.
The object of the address seemed to be to impress upon the minds of
freedmen, the importance of a correct understanding of their true
relation to white men of the South, who he represented as being their
only true friends, and to impress upon them the importance of cultivating
amicable relations with them by a course of life which would entitle them
to their kind consideration, and make it to their interest to retain
them as laborers. Their only chance now was to rely upon their own
industry, honesty and frugality, whithout the
proper exercise of which they must become a more deeply degraded people,
and would ultimately become extinct.
There were other points of interest which he discussed with a degree of
intelligence and force seldom evinced by one of his color; and during his
whole address he gave utterance to no sentiment to which any true
Southern man might not heartily subscribe, however unpalatable some of
them might have been to those who profess to be the freedmen's only true
friends, the nature and object of which friendship was correctly
explained and ludicrously criticised. |