In view of these
facts, we consider the proportion of soldiers, nearly one in eight,
extraordinary,--though we are aware that the number includes many who
had not lived in those counties, who came into our lines with the
purpose of enlisting. These simple figures involve the first feature of
the true policy in the "Four-Million question." The war offers the
negroes this priceless bounty. Let them fight for it. Let us enlist
them, to the last man we can persuade to serve.
"If you do that," says Brazen-Face, "you have left on your hands a horde
of starving imbeciles, women, and orphans, to support, from whom you
have cruelly separated their able-bodied men." No, Brazen-Face, we have
no such thing. In the month of March the Government had to supply
rations in the district we have named to only seven thousand eight
hundred and fifty persons who were members of the families of these
soldiers,--the cost being about one dollar a month for each of them. Now
the State of Massachusetts, dear Brazen-Face, supplies "State-aid" to
the families of its soldiers; and for this support, in this very city of
yours, it pays on the average five times as much in proportion as the
United States has to pay for the families of these colored soldiers.
Nay, you may even take all the persons relieved by Government in General
Butler's district,--the number is sixteen thousand seven hundred and
sixteen,--count them all as the families of soldiers, which not one-half
of them are, and the whole support which they all receive from
Government is not half as much as the families of the same number of
soldiers are costing the State of Massachusetts.
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