the African race, in lots not exceeding 20 acres. The announcement of the intended sale of 24,000 acres in large lots was received with great dissatisfaction by the friends of .the Freedmen. Many thought that the blacks had an exclusive claim to these lands which had so long been drenched with their sweat and blood, and nearly all saw with alarm the threatened revival of the old system of large proprietorships.

To put up these lands for sale in lots of several hundred acres was to place them entirely out of the reach of the blacks, for the reports of the profit derived from raising cotton had spread far and wide, and a large number of speculators were eager to take plantations at ten or twenty times the rateswere only about half enough forty-acre lots to supply the people.* Those who got no land would be greatly dissatisfied, and in this respect, if in no other, the scheme of sale was seriously defective.

Enthusiastic rejoicings followed the publication of the new instructions, and meetings were held at St. Helena and atBeaufort, at which, after much natural congratulation, the native negroes, and the soldiers in the department, both white and black, were urgently exhorted to take immediate advantage of their pre-emption rights. The majority of the Tax Commissioners, however, refused to obey these instructions, alleging that they had been fraudulently obtained. They went on selling plantations according to the September program, and finally procured the formal revocation of the instructions of December 31, so that those previously issued