vailed and the misfortunes that have fallen upon
many parts of the South, a good degree of prosperity and success has already been attained. To
the oft-repeated slander that the Negroes will not
work and are incapable of taking care of themselves, it is a sufficient answer that their voluntary
labor has produced nearly all the food that supported the whole people, besides a large amount
of rice, sugar and tobacco for export, and two
millions of bales of cotton each year, on which
was paid into the United States Treasury during
the years 1866 to 1867 a tax of more than forty
millions of dollars ($40,000,000).
It is not claimed that this result was wholly due to the care
and oversight of this Bureau but it is safe to say
as it has been said repeatedly by intelligent Southern white men, that without the Bureau or some
similar agency, the material interests of the country would have greatly suffered and the government would have lost a far greater amount than has been expended in its maintenance. . . .
“Of the nearly eight hundred thousand (800,000) acres of farming land and about five thousand (5,000) pieces of town property transferred to this Bureau by military and treasury officers, or taken up by assistant commissioners, enough was leased to produce a revenue of nearly four hundred thousand dollars ($400,000).
