thers 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. Because this is the moment of impending victory, because
that victory should be used on the instant, the Government is bound to
attend to such provisions now. It is said, that, when General McClellan
landed below Yorktown, now two years ago, the Washington Post-Office had
made the complete arrangements for resuming the mail-service to
Richmond. Undoubtedly the Post-Office Department was right in such
foresight. At the present moment, it is equally right for the Government
to be prepared for the immediate use of the victories for which, as we
write, we are all hoping.

The experiments which we have had to try, in the care and treatment of
liberated blacks, have been tried under very different conditions. When
the masters on the Sea Islands escaped from their slaves, leaving but
one white man behind them, in the midst of fifteen thousand negroes,
those negroes were, in general, in their old familiar homes. They had,
indeed, trusted themselves to the tender mercies of the "Yankees"
because they would not abandon home. The islands on which they lived
were easily protected, and, thanks to the generous foresight of those
who early had the charge of them, a body of humane and intelligent
superintendents soon appeared, to watch over all their interests. In the
District of Columbia, on the other hand, the blacks whom the war first
liberated had themselves fled from the