heapness of administration gained? The answer is in the
second great principle which belongs to the policy of using our
victories. Change the homes of the people as little as possible. The
families of negroes in the Virginia district are put upon separate farms
as far as possible,--on land, and for crops, as nearly as possible, the
same as they were used to. These people are conservative. They are fond
of home. They are used to work; and they can take care of themselves.
Every inducement is given them, therefore, 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