The Daily Gate City

Restoration of Slavery:

A Savannah paper expresses the fear that the profitable business of raising rice will never be renewed in that State, and that the rice fields will become unproductive swamps. It says that the white man, even the acclimated and native, is unable to cultivate these plantations, and the negro will not, unless he is made to. The only remedy it sees lies in the hope that Congress will consent that the State shall make laws compelling the negroes to labor. The pretence under which this may be done is thus foreshadowed:

For many years the negro population must form a large proportion of the paupers, vagrants, and criminals in our midst. The States of South and North Carolina have no penitentiaries; and it is well they have not, or they would be speedily crowded. Let those States, then, provide settlements where negro criminals and vagrants can be placed for penal servitude; let them buy up these rice fields that are reverting to swamps (which they can do for a song,) and send their negro criminals there to work them. Such a plan would inflict the punishment, attain the desired end, and prove a source of great revenue to the State, and of benefit to the people at large. It will be perfectly safe labor, as far as the negro's health is concerned, for the disagreeable, he can stand it.