may have to be taught to use them. Without providing
depots of supplies for an enemy, however, we believe there might be a
regular system of establishing the negro in his own home, on or near the
plantation where he was born, which would give us from the beginning the
advantages of a settled country, instead of a desert in the regions in
the rear of our lines.

These three suggestions are enough to determine a general policy which
shall give us, in all instances, the immediate use of our victories. Let
us enlist all the able-bodied men we can from the negroes. Let us
establish the rest as near their old homes as we can,--not in
poor-houses or phalansteries, but on their own farms. Let us appoint for
each proper district a small staff of officers sufficient to see that
their rights are respected by their neighbors, and that they have means
to defend themselves against reckless or unorganized aggression. There
seems to be no need of sending them as fugitives to our rear. There
seems to be no need of leaving the country we pass a desert. There seems
to be no need of waiting a year or two before we find for them their
places. God has found for them their places. Let them stay where they
were born. We have made them freemen. Let them understand that they must
maintain their freedom.

More simply stated, such a policy amounts merely to this: "Treat them as
you would treat white people."

"What would you do with the blacks?" said a Commission of Inquiry to an
intelligent jurist who had made some very brilliant decisions at New
Orleans.

"I would not do anything with them," was his very happy and suggestive
reply.

He would let them alone. If we could free ourselves of the notion that
we must huddle them together, or that we must carry them to some strange
land,--in short, that they have no rights of home and fireside,--we
should find that we had a much smaller problem to deal with. Keep them
where you find them, unless they will go on and fight with you. Whether
they go or stay, let them understand that they are your friends and you
are theirs, and that they must defend themselves, if they expect you to
defend them.

The education and the civilization will follow. "The church and the
school," as John Adams says, "belong with the town and the militia." The
statistics of General Butler's department begin to show that a larger
proportion of blacks are at school there than of whites. As we write
these words, we receive Gen