CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



295 



wring cries of shnme and indignation from the civil- 

 ized world, dishearten the friends and advocates of 

 emancipation at home, and give new vitality to the 

 disloyal suggestions of the slaveholders' allies in the 

 North and West. * * * 



Has the Government any moral right to free the 

 slave without seeing to it that, with every chain it 

 breaks, the best within its power is done to keep the 

 freedman from hankering after his master and his 

 bondage, from feeling that his liberty is a burden, his 

 life a curse, and his domestic affections even more 

 fatal to his peace under our flag than beneath the 

 plantation whip ? Shall he hunger and thirst, shall 

 he go naked and cold, shall he wander houseless and 

 die unburied, shall his aged parents and young chil- 

 dren be scattered where he cannot find them, and in 

 unspeakable misery lay their bones together, too old 

 and too young to contend with their fate upon the 

 strange and distant soil to which fear and want have 

 driven them? While any thing remains undone with- 

 in the power of the nation or the Government to do 

 to alleviate or diminish this misery, the Christian 

 principle and pity of our people will allow none who 

 are responsible for it to rest in peace. 



* * * * * * 



It is plain to us, with our experience, that the ques- 

 tion is too large for any thing short of Government 

 authority, Government resources, and Government 

 ubiquity to deal with. The plans, the means, the 

 agencies within any volunteer control are insignifi- 

 cant in their adequacy to the vastness of the de- 

 mand. Our relief associations have discharged their 

 highest duty in testing many of the 'most doubtful 

 questions touching the negro's ability and willing- 

 ness to come under direction when direction has lost 

 its authoritative character. They have proved the 

 freedman' s diligence, docility, and loyalty, his intel- 

 ligence and value as a laborer. They have alleviated 

 much want and misery also. But were their resour- 

 ces ten times what they are, and ten times what they 

 can be made, they would be no substitute for the 

 governmental watchfulness and provision which so 

 numerous a race under such extraordinary circum- 

 stances requires. In our judgment the present and 

 the future of the freedmen demand a kind and degree 

 of study, of guidance, and of aid, which it is in the 

 nature of things impossible the Government should 

 give indirectly, or by means of any existing bureau 

 or combination of bureaus. * 



We ask, then, your interposition with Congress, 

 recommending the immediate creation of a bureau of 

 emancipation, charged with the study of plans and 

 the execution of measures for easing, guiding, and in 

 every way judiciously and humanely aiding the pas- 

 sage of our emancipated and yet to be emancipated 

 blacks from their old condition of forced labor to 

 their new state of voluntary industry. We ask it for 

 many reasons, but we will content ourselves with 

 stating only two : 



1. It is necessary that there should be a central 

 office, to collect from original investigations, and to 

 receive from investigations already made and mak- 

 ing, the now scattered information and varied and 

 undigested testimony respecting the condition, wants, 

 and prospects of the freedman. The amount of 

 knowledge now existing in private hands, or local 

 spheres and associations, is already great ; but it is 

 nearly useless for want of being arranged and brought 

 into systematic order. If offered to the Government, 

 as it constantly is, it is brought to officials already 

 overburdened with care and duties, and laid before 

 Departments which are not yet agreed as to the pre- 

 cise sphere within which it falls. The honest differ- 

 ences of Departments as to their authority and re- 

 sponsibility in the case have been a chief obstruction 

 to the methods of dealing promptly with the neces- 

 sities of the freedman. Were a bureau in existence 

 with no other duty but to attend to this vast and 

 ever-expanding class of our fellow-creatures, country- 

 men, an J citizens, it would at once be able to concen- 



trate, and in foe shortest possible time to methodize, 

 the now diffused and disjointed testimony in the case, 

 and from its central and commanding point of view 

 to devise plans and measures which would satisfy the 

 humanity and relieve the anxieties of the nation. 



2. It is not merely a central office that is wanted. 

 It must be a Government bureau. The various freed- 

 men's associations, rich, numerous, and powerful, 

 might unite and establish a central office at Washing- 

 ton, in which should converge all the light and 

 knowledge collected at the most distant points of the 

 circumference, and from which wise and humane 

 plans might originate and radiate in all directions; 

 but such a central office, disconnected from the 

 Government, as in that case by the hypothesis it 

 would be, without any right to official information or 

 assistance, would lack the chief illumination now re- 

 quired, which is simply this : a knowledge how the 

 existing machinery of the Government in all depart- 

 ments can be brought to bear on the problem of guid- 

 ance, support, and relief in this temporary though 

 not brief state of the transition of millions of bond- 

 men from forced to free labor. This is a problem in 

 which the vast, costly, omnipresent machinery and 

 agencies of the Government already existing, with 

 the least possible additions and the least possible dis- 

 turbance, are to be economized and applied to the 

 work of starting and aiding a humane process of 

 emancipation. * * 



But, apart from political economy, there is a moral 

 economy to be considered. It is "really a matter of 

 small consequence whether the humane and success- 

 ful exodus of the negro cost more or less. The honor, 

 the dignity, the moral and religious character of this 

 nation is at stake. Our duties to God and man are 

 not to be sacrificed to any mere pecuniary consid- 

 erations. We are bound by the highest spiritual ob- 

 ligations to make the process of emancipation for the 

 slaves as safe and as little unhappy and obstructive 

 to them as possible. Again, apathy, an indifference 

 to human life the terrible accompaniment of a state 

 of war is demoralizing in the extreme to civil and 

 social order. White life is not safe when negro life 

 is held cheap. 



The neglect of the negro is self-neglect ; and his 

 abuse, or his needless decimation, is certain to pro- 

 duce murder, and arson, and violent crimes at home. 

 We cannot escape the vengeance inhabiting violated 

 laws. We are members one of another, and if one of 

 the members suffer all the members suffer with it. 

 It is, therefore, with an instinct of self-preservation, 

 as well as with a fear of the righteous retribution of 

 God, that the moralized and intelligent, the humane 

 and Christian people of this country, cry out to their 

 national Government that the forced and military 

 emancipation of the negro shall be made as humane 

 as the difficult and serious circumstances of the case 

 will permit. The Christian heart, the moralized 

 brain of the nation, will not suffer their Government 

 to do less than the utmost in the ordering of this 

 great and solemn matter. 



Let not this anxiety for a bureau of emancipation, 

 as an expression and organ of Government solicitude 

 and care, be confounded with a disposition to overdo 

 the care of the freedmen to come between them and 

 the natural laws of political economy ; to substi- 

 tute supervision and direction for their own latent 

 energies and self-helpfulness. The utmost extent to 

 which the ordinary principles of free light and labor 

 can be applied to the blacks should be insisted on ; 

 the least possible done for them, the most possible 

 expected of them ; as little difference made as can be 

 between them and other laborers, their treatment al- 

 ways leaning rather to too little than too much aid 

 and direction. It is to learn by careful inquiry the 

 utmost extent to which this sound canon of civiliza- 

 tion can be applied to the freedmen that the first 

 study of the bureau of emancipation would be direct- 

 ed. But experience has alreadv taught that it can- 

 not be applied to at least a million of them further 



