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The reports of the Cherokee agent during the year 1855 devote considerable space to the discussion of the slavery question in its relations to and among that nation, from which it appears that considerable local excitement, as well as a general feeling of irritation and insecurity among the holders of slave property, had been superinduced by the antislavery teachings of the Northern missionaries and emissaries of the various free soil organizations throughout the North. Three years later the agent reported that the amicable relations which existed between the Cherokees and the General Government certainly merited the latter's fostering care and protection, for already they were evincing much interest in all questions that concerned its welfare; that the majority of them were strongly national or democratic in political sympathy, though it was with regret he was obliged to report the existence of a few black republicans, who were the particular foundlings of the abolition missionaries. This same agent the following year (1859), after commending their enterprise and thrift, remarks: "I am clearly of the opinion that the rapid advancement of the Cherokees is owing in part to the fact of their being slaveholders, which has operated as an incentive to all industrial pursuits, and I believe if every family of the wild roving tribes of Indians were to own a negro man and woman, who would teach them to cultivate the soil and to properly prepare and cook their food, and could have a schoolmaster appointed for every district, it would tend more to civilize them than any plan that could be adopted." The latter part of this proposition perhaps no one would be willing to dispute, but in the light of twenty-five years of eventful history made since its promulgation, the author himself, if still living, would scarcely be so "clearly of opinion" concerning the soundness of his first assumption.