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Ex-Governor Herschel V. Johnson closed the late Convention with a brief speech. It brought tears to the eyes of many delegates, was ordered to be spread upon the journal, and has been very generally printed in the newspapers of the State. During my journeyings since the adjournment of the Convention, I have often been referred to it as an epitome of Georgia feeling and judgment. It is scarcely less noticeable for what it contains than for what it does not contain; but I note now only a single paragraph in which he speaks of the freedmen. It is as follows: --

"We are now to enter upon the experiment whether the class of people to which we are in future to look as our laboring class can be organized into efficient and trustworthy laborers. That may be done -- or I hope it may be done -- if we are left to ourselves.
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If we cannot succeed, others need not attempt it; and I trust that in the future we will have the poor privilege of being let alone in reference to this class of our people."

I bear you sorrowful witness that there spoke the true Georgian. He is sublimely ignorant of the fact that the negro is also a child of the Republic; sublimely ignorant of the other fact, that the war has restored to him certain human rights. He only sees so many machines, the mission of which it is to do his work; and he asks you to let him alone in their management. He begs of you to give him this "poor privilege," and gravely tells you that they cannot be made to work at all if this be denied him!

I also bear you sorrowful witness that every Georgian despises the negro. As a slave he was well enough; but as a man he is only a poor, pitiful creature, from whom little or no good can be expected. Secessionists and Unionists are just alike, so far as I can see, in contempt for him, and alike in wanting him out of the way.

"I hope you will remain in the State long enough," said a very intelligent gentleman of Northern Georgia to me, nearly a month ago, -- "I hope you will remain in the State long enough to see what a miserable thing the negro is, the poor creature who brought on the war and is bound to be exterminated before it ends; for it won't end till they or we are gone." There also spoke the true Georgian, a kindly man, a sober judge, and a professed Unionist.

From the average Georgia stand-point, he is half insane who talks of educating the negro. "What, build schoolhouses for the niggers!" exclaimed a citizen to a Cincinnati gentleman with whom I sat in the public room at the Macon hotel. "Well, when we do, I'll just let you know." Some of the leading men see and say that the interests of the State will be promoted by educating the freedmen; but nine tenths of the people sneer just as the Macon man did. Yet within four blocks of that same hotel I saw the negro porter of a store
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laboring at his spelling-book in the corner, when no customers were in; and a young negro woman with her spelling-book fastened to the fence, that she might study while at work over the wash-tub. Still I'm everywhere told that the nigger can't learn, and money spent in educating him would be money thrown away!

Georgia is the richest and most enlightened of the Gulf States. It asks Northern capital, but it holds out no inducement for the development of the mental and moral capital dormant in its negroes and poor whites. For which of these classes there is the best chance in the coming years it is hard to say. There certainly can be no more wretched human beings than the "crackers." The adults of this class can have no hope for this life, and the children will grow to the estate of their parents unless the spirit of caste is broken down and common schools are built up. The universal prophecy that the negro will not work is undermining his humanity and forcing him to its partial fulfilment. The universal contempt in which he is held is driving him into hatred of his contemners and such vagabondage as leads by swift steps to the grave.