You are not to wait for its last ramification before
you lead in peace and plenty, which ought to follow close in its first
footsteps.
To an observing and sensitive nation it seems as if all these questions,
and many others like them, were not yet fully regarded. Yet they are now
the questions of the hour, because they are a part of the great central
question, "How will you break down the armed power of the Rebel States?"
To maintain the conquered belt between us and our "wayward sisters" as a
land of plenty, and not as a desert,--to establish on system the blacks
whose masters desert them, or who take refuge within our lines,--and
also to maintain in that border-strip a resident peasantry, armed and
loyal,--these are not matters of sentiment, which may be postponed to a
more convenient season, but they are essential to the stiff, steady, and
successful prosecution of our campaigns. It is not, therefore, simply
for charity Boards of Education to discuss such subjects. It is for the
Government to determine its policy, and for the people, who make that
Government, to compel it so to determine. The Government may not shake
off questions of confiscated lands, pay of negro troops, superintendence
of fugitives, and the like, as if they were the unimportant details of a
halcyon future.
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