Excerpt from The Widow in the South, a Series of Letters ON account of the widespread agitation following the appointment of Dr. Crum as Collector of the Port of Charleston, I, early this year, made an extended trip through the. South, at the request of my editor-ih-chief. In sending me to look up so delicate a mat ter as the race problem from the Southern standpoint, my only instruction was to write entirely without personal prejudice the real sentiment of the Southern people - if I could get at it. I was enabled, through being hos pitably entertained by representative old families, to make deductions as to the true situation, founded on indubitable and con vincing facts. That the crossed wires of politics alone stand responsible for the ques tions which bring the negro into a promi nence where he must necessarily show failure, sad though it be, is nevertheless the case. Thus forced to leap over the space of his own unfitness, his progress is backward rather than forward. But for this he might now, after forty years of freedom, be showing a solid foundation for his true positionma re sult which could easily have been attained had he been left to the kindness and guidance of those who understood best his capabilities and slow mental growth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.