The strip is here broad,
and there narrow. It is broad in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It
stretches up in a narrow line along the Sea Islands and the Atlantic
coast. What do we mean to do with this strip, while it is in the special
charge of the nation? Do we mean to leave it to the chapter of
accidents, as we have done? A few charitable organizations have kept the
Sea Islands along, so that they are a range of flourishing plantations,
as they used to be. A masterly inactivity, on the other hand, leaves the
northern counties of Virginia, this summer, within the very sight of the
Capitol, to be the desert and disgrace which they were when they were
the scenes of actual war. A handful of banditti rides through them when
it chooses, and even insults the communications of our largest army. The
people of that State are permitted to point at this desolation, and to
say that such are the consequences of Federal victories. For another
instance, take the "Four-Million question." These four million negroes,
from whose position the war has sprung, are now almost all set free, in
law. A very large number of them--possibly a quarter part of them--are
free in fact. One hundred and thirty thousand of them are in the
national army. With regard to these men the question is not, "What are
you going to do with them when the war is done?" but, "What will you do
with them to-day and to-morrow?" Your duty is to use victory in the
moment of victory.
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