46, issued at
Fort Monroe on the fifth of December last. For General Banks has had his
hands tied, from the beginning, by the unfortunate exemption from the
Emancipation Proclamation of the first two districts in Louisiana.
Considering the difficulties by which he was thus entangled, we have
never seen but he used to the best his opportunities. General Saxton's
island-district has been so small, and in a measure so peculiar, that it
may be urged that the result learned there would not be applicable on
the mainland, on a large scale. But General Butler has had all the
negroes of the sea-board of Virginia and North Carolina to look after.
He has given us a census of them,--and we have already official returns
of their _status_. There seems no reason why what has been done there
may not be done anywhere.
In General Butler's department, there were, in the beginning of April,
sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and forty-seven negroes. Of these,
eight thousand three hundred and forty-four were soldiers, who had
voluntarily enlisted into the service of the United States. These men
enlisted with no bounty but what the General so well named as the "great
boon awarded to each of them, the result of the war,--Freedom for
himself and his race forever." They enlisted, knowing that at that time
the Government promised them but ten dollars a month.
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