The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864, page 219 by Various Authors
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re, to establish themselves. 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. These amiable neighbors were taught, from the first, that the rights of the colored farmers were just the same as their own, and that they would be very apt to retaliate in kind for injuries. Of such a system one result is that no guerrilla-warfare has yet been known in the counties of Virginia where such a peasantry is establishing itself. It is near our posts, it is true,--not nearer, however, than some of the regions where Mosby has won his laurels. We believe that this system deserves to be pressed much farther. We can see that the farmers on such farms may have to be supplied in part with arms for their defence. They may have to be taught to use them. Without providing depots of supplies for an enemy, however,