Hilton Head, S. C.
June 25th 1865

Friend Fisk

Thank you for your friendly encouragement, of which I was sure; for I know from Carrie how much your sympathies were with these colored brethren & sisters of ours, & I knew that all effort, however feeble, to give them the liberty of spirit which shall a lone make them free indeed, would meet with your approbation. It is time that this great problem, What shall we do with the black man? is at last solving itself, & is sure to come out right in time. I hope it will be in our generation but I don't know. "Forward though I cannot look I guess & fear." Somehow people are so constituted that they will not do justice so long as they can help it. It will be great injustice if the negros are not enfranchised or at least provision made for their future enfranchisement. I think no one who knows them will deny that they are as well qualified for citizenship as the Irish & German population of the North. I think they are much better, & that they ought to be made citizens at once. It is their right. This is their native land. They have by their labor done their share toward making it productive: what right of native born American is there to which they are not entitled? I wish I could make the Republican party at the North feel this as strongly as I do. They would give themselves no rest till this was accomplished.

I shall be happy to try to give Mrs. Fisk some account of my school & I wish I possessed the pen of some of those envied writers, who have the talent of making things seem almost present to the bodily eye. My schoolroom is built in the modest style. It has sashed windows which make it something better than a barn. It is also used for a church. A tall box serves for a desk, & behind this behold me seated. Before me are fifty or sixty black faces--jet b lack most of them--belonging to boys & girls of from three years old to thirty. Of their literary attainments I cannot speak very highly. Some of them are very quick & bright, but I find them as a general thing rather dull. My "primer class" embraces nearly all the school. They look queerly67--such a long row of black faces set at such different heights from the floor & all bending over their "a-b abs." They are easily governed after the first--when they find what must be done & that it must be done. They are affectionate & polite. Indeed I think this a very polite race. I never saw more polished manners among any people than among the common laborers here.

My school hours are from nine to one; after that I have letters to read & write & very queer ones too sometimes. For instance, one woman in writing to her husband says, "I want you to come home, or at least send me some money, for I've had a letter from my other husband what went off & left me, & he's died & buried, & I've nobody to spend on but you." For another young woman I read *&wrote the most ardent love-leers for several weeks, to a sergeant in the army, when one day she astonished me by bringing a letter form her husband to read, he being quite another person. She seemed totally unable to see that there could be anything in the least improper in receiving the addresses of the ardent sergeant.

The men I think far superior to the women in most respects. In their appearance they are certainly the nobler looking. When I look round on them I am filled with indignation that such a people should be bought & sold. The women however have something slavish, brutish in their gait, & manner as well as in their stolid, phlegmatic faces. There are exceptions on both sides of course. But I believe they are a noble race, & that a few generations of culture will work wonders with them. I hope with the amenities of civilization they will not also contract the vices. They need missionaries among them for this end. Religion has been everything to them--their chief comfort--almost the sole humanizing influence about them. But it has necessarily been more emotional than doctrinal use the word in its etymological sense--& I think there is reason to fear that when those causes are removed which made it necessary to them, it will be found built, not perhaps on the sand, but not on the solid rock. Their preachers are here chiefly from among themselves--men of little more learning than their people. I think that an educated, liberal-minded man would find ample field for labor everywhere here. No amount of talent or culture would be wasted.

Pardon me for prosing so long. I can hardly stop when I get to writing upon this subject, & I get on it before I am aware. The rest of my duty consists in calling among the people, hearing their stories, & learning their wants; &in my evening school for adults. That has been very large until since the warm weather came on. It was very pleasant indeed, & some of the pupils have learned a good deal. Here, too I find the men the superior. They all agree in being immensely thankful for freedom, & in worshipping, next to Christ, "Derek ole fader, Massa Link um." You can hardly imagine their grief at his death. It actually made them silent, they were so overcome.

Do you think we are all "free thinkers"? I do not. The number of them is comparatively very small indeed. Whom do you know who dares to think boldly, as Martin Luther thought when he condemned the pope's indulgences; as Garrison thought when he set up his obscure paper with no visible support? I wish there were more free-thinkers. It seems to me that the true end of life is to attain individuality; to develop our personality; to become free from prejudice, the early bias of education, & the later influence of those whom we respect, admire, or have been taught to follow. But that does not seem to be the normal type of the race. Not an independent or erratic mind ever started off upon its eccentric orbit that it did not draw after it more or less followers--devotees who were ready to become martyrs. Most people do not think at all; of the remainder nine-tenths think in the grooves of custom or habit, & the other tenth are sneered at, or persecuted as free-thinkers, & infidels. Infidels! the only people who have any faith, true belief!

There! prosing again. Fortunately for you there's a limit set for me on ahead a little way. I don't know now that I have told your mother what she wants to know. I should be glad to answer any questions which she would like to ask. Pardon this unconscionable epistle & believe me yours with regard.

Jane B. Smith

If you write again, please direct to Hanson, as I am about going home for my summer vacation.