ould have the encouragement
of wages. There would be transient difficulties at the outset, but no
more than a bad system lasting for ages might be expected to leave
behind. The first generation might be unfitted for the active duties and
responsibilities of citizenship; but this difficulty, under generous
provisions for education, would not pass to the next. Even now they are
not so much behind the masses of the whites. Of the Virginians who took
the oath of allegiance at Hampton, not more than one in fifteen could
write his name, and the rolls captured at Hatteras disclose an equally
deplorable ignorance. The contrabands might be less addicted than the
now dominant race to bowie-knives and duels, think less of the value
of bludgeons as forensic arguments, be less inhospitable to innocent
sojourners from Free States, and have far inferior skill in robbing
forts and arsenals, plundering the Treasury, and betraying the country
at whose crib they had fattened; but mankind would forgive them for not
acquiring these accomplishments of modern treason. As a race, they may
be less vigorous and thrifty than the Saxon, but they are more social,
docile, and affectionate, fulfilling the theory which Channing held in
relation to them, if advanced to freedom and civilization.

If in the progress of the war they should be called to bear arms, there
need be no reasonable apprehension that they would exhibit the ferocity
of savage races. Unlike such, they have been subordinated to civilized
life. They are by nature a religious people. They have received an
education in the Christian faith from devout teachers of their own and
of the dominant race. Some have been taught (let us believe it) by
the precepts of Christian masters, and some by the children of those
masters, repeating the lessons of the Sabbath-school. The slaveholders
assure us that they have all been well treated. If that be so, they have
no wrongs to avenge. Associated with our army, they would conform to
the stronger and more disciplined race. Nor is this view disproved by
servile insurrections. In those cases, the insurgents, without arms,
without allies, without discipline, but throwing themselves against
society, against government, against everything, saw no other escape
than to devastate and destroy without mercy in order to get a foothold.
If they exterminated, it was because extermination was threatened
against them. In the Revolution, in the army at Cambridge, from