What is to Become of the Blacks

Hon. Samuel Hooper answered the question it his speech of last week before the Republicans of Ward Nine, in Boston, as follows:

To those who ask what is to become of the blacks when slavery is abolished, and who affect an apprehension that the present free States of the North may be overrun with them, I would recommend the report of Mr. Conway, the superintendent of free labor in Louisiana, recently made to General Canby, on the results of the system. He says, in his report, that there are sixty free schools with one hundred teachers and eight thousand scholars; that the number of blacks employed on plantations is about 35,000, of whom about one-fourth are first-class hands, receiving wages at eight dollars per month besides board, clothing, medical attendance, schooling for their children, and one acre of ground worth five hundred dollars, to raise cotton. The wages paid to the laborers, he says, is as a whole more remunerative than has been ordinarily paid to farm hands in the North who work by the year.

At the close of the present year there will be an average of about fifty dollars due to each cost of the 35,000, in addition to their little crop of cotton, corn, sugar, potatoes, &C., which will average is each more than is due them for wages. There are besides 15,000 of whom he has no return, and 30,000 in the city of New Orleans; making a total of 86,000 blacks there who are working for wages under the educational and labor system established by Gen. Banks in Louisiana. Is it at all probable that any of those laborers would be included to leave their occupation at the South to come among us in the cold climate of the North, to which they are not accustomed, and to a colder welcome from the prejudices existing against them here? In my opinion, when slavery no longer exists at the South, there will be two colored men go South from here to every one that comes North from there.