"The loyalty of the masses and most of the leaders of the southern people," he said, "consists in submission to necessity.

There is, except in individual instances, an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." Another government official in Florida was quite doubtful of the Southern whites.

"I would pin them down at the point of the bayonet," he declared, "so close that they would not have room to wiggle, and allow intelligent colored people to go up and vote in preference to them.

The only Union element in the South proper...

is among the colored people.