Farms of eight or ten acres each from abandoned property are allotted
them. Where the Government employs any of them, it employs them only at
the same rate as the soldier is paid,--so that, if the negro can earn
more than that, he does so, and is urged, as well as permitted to do
so. He is not bound to the soil, except by merely temporary agreement.
What follows is that he uses the gift of freedom to his own best
advantage. "Political freedom," says the philosophical General, "rightly
defined, is liberty to work." The negroes in his command show that they
understand the definition. And this is the reason why, as we have
explained, the "family-relief" costs but one-fifth what it does here in
Boston.
"But," says Grunnio, at this point, "how will you protect your ten-acre
farms from invidious neighbors, from wandering guerrillas?" We will
advise them, dear grumbler, to protect themselves. That is one of the
responsibilities which freemen have to take as the price of freedom. In
the department of Norfolk, where seventeen thousand blacks are
supporting themselves on scattered farms, we believe not a pig has been
stolen nor a fence broken down on their little plantations by semi-loyal
neighbors, who had, perhaps, none too much sympathy, at the first, with
their prosperity.
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