Note 4 — Chapter IV · Newbern and Beaufort—Black and White.

And yet an official report, since published in the newspapers, shows that out of three thousand whites in Beaufort last winter, between twelve and fourteen hundred were applicants for the charity of Government rations. Out of about an equal number of negroes, less than four hundred were dependent on the Government! The secret of the disparity was, that the negroes took work when they could get it; the whites were “ladies and gentlemen,” and wouldn’t work.

A Richmond letter, of June 30th, in the Boston Commonwealth, testifies to the same feeling among the Virginians. Describing the charities of the Sanitary Commission, it says:

“The most fastidious, though not too dainty to beg, were yet ludicrously exacting and impatient. They assumed, in many ways, the air of condescending patrons. ‘Do you expect me to go into that dirty crowd?’ ‘Haven’t you some private way by which I could enter?’ ‘I can never carry that can of soup in the world!’ they whined. The sick must suffer, unless a servant was at command to ‘tote’ a little box of gelatine; and the family must wait till some alien hand could take home the flour. The aristocratic sometimes begged for work. Mr. Williams, of the Sanitary Commission, when asked by a mother to furnish work for her daughters, said: ‘If they will serve as nurses to the suffering men in your own army hospitals, I will secure pay for them.’ ‘My daughters go into a hospital!’ exclaimed the insulted mother. ‘They are ladies, sir!’ ‘Our Northern ladies would rather work than beg,’ quietly remarked Mr. Williams. Another mother begged Mr. Chase, of the Union Commission, to give her daughters ‘something to do.’ ‘Anything by which they can earn something, for we have not a penny in the world.’ ‘They shall help me measure flour,’ said Mr. Chase. ‘My daughters are ladies, sir,’ replied the mother.”