enemy's territory. Our Government invites them and the army will be
bound to receive them. It may be safely assumed that many thousands (it
is hardly possible to say how many) will throw themselves into our
power; and they will certainly have the strongest possible claim to the
care and protection of those who have lured them from such homes as they
possessed, from regular employment and adequate sustenance, and from all
fixed habits of their peculiar condition. Winter will be already upon
them, and they will be without homes, and in a great measure, too,
without food and clothes. It is not possible that the large numbers
destined to abandon their masters at the call of the President, can be
advantageously employed as laborers and servants in the army, and it
will therefore be absolutely necessary to find other useful and
appropriate occupations for them, sufficiently profitable to make them
sure of subsistence and of some degree of comfort, from the inception of
their new condition.

It must be remembered that the plantation negroes, and, indeed, the
negroes generally, in all the rebellious States, have never been
accustomed to take care of themselves, or even to direct their own daily
labors. They have not the least experience in the management of affairs,
except under the control of masters or overseers. They have neither
foresight nor enterprise, nor any cultivated capacity to provide for
their own wants or for those of their families. If they have lived as
families at all, the head of the domestic organization has never had
the responsibility which naturally belongs to that position, and,
consequently, has not acquired any of the manly and noble impulses which
the sense of that responsibility invariably gives. These unfortunate
creatures, deprived of all opportunity for education, never having known
the cares and blessings of independence, but receiving their daily
support from the hand which guided and compelled their labor, emerge
from this condition almost as helpless as children. Generally, in the
glimmering twilight of their intellects, they entertain no other idea of
liberty but that of living without work. Doubtless they will readily
arrive at a better understanding of their new condition; but it is of
immense importance that they shall be started in the right path and
tutored in the ways of freedom.

The authority which will have thus taken them, suddenly and without any
preparation, from their recent emp