  In time the Commissioners “let the blacks do as they wished,” emancipation was proclaimed in the West and in the South, “Negroes everywhere refused to work, and economic conditions worsened to the extent that insubordination increased” (SFHR, 95–97). In examining the correspondence of this particular period, Cooper notes the descriptions of insurrections and loss of property, and the seemingly secondary attention to the question of slavery. She asserts, “Thus we find one more argument in support of the idea, which inevitably grows stronger as one reads so many convincing documents, that the question of the emancipation of the slaves had only been considered and embraced by a few enthusiasts, idealists like Brissot and his friends…who had only seen a problem to be resolved by humanity and theory where in fact a thorough practical preparation was necessary” (SFHR, 98).