How to Use Victory
THE policy of the nation, since the war began, has been eminently the Anglo-Saxon policy. That is to say, we have not adapted our actions to any preconceived theory, nor to any central idea. From the President downward, every one has done as well as he could in every single day, doubtful, and perhaps indifferent, as to what he should do the next day. This is the method dear to the AngloSaxon mind. The English writers acknowledge this; they call it the “practical system,” and make an especial boast that it is the method of their theology, their philosophy, their physical science, their manufactures, and their trade. In the language of philosophy, it directs us “ to do the duty that comes next us ”; in a figure drawn from the card-table, it bids us “follow our hand.” The only branch of the Keltic race which adopts it expresses it in the warlike direction, “ When you see a head, hit it.”
We have no objection to make to this so-called practical system in the present case, if it only be broadly and generously adopted. If it reduce us to a war of posts, to hand-to-mouth finance, and to that wretched bureau - administration which thinks the day’s work is done when the day’s letters have been opened, docketed, and answered, it becomes, it is true, a very unpractical system, and soon reduces a great state to be a very little one. But if the men who direct any country will, in good faith, enlarge their view every day, from their impressions of yesterday to the new realities of to-day, — if they will rise at once to the new demands of to-day, and meet those demands under the new light of to-day, — all the better is it, undoubtedly, if they are not hampered by traditionary theories, if they are even indifferent as to the consistency of their record, and are, thus, as able as they are willing to work out God’s present will with all their power. For it must be that the present light of noonday will guide us better at noonday than any prophecies which we could make at midnight or at dawn.
The country, at this moment, demands this broad and generous use of its great present advantages. In three years of sacrifice we have won extraordinary victories. We have driven back the beachline of rebellion so that its territory is now two islands, both together of not half the size of the continent which it boasted when it began. We have seen such demonstrations of loyalty and the love of liberty that we dare say that this is to be one free nation, as we never dared say it before the war began. We are on the edge, as we firmly believe, of yet greater victories, both in the field and in the conscience of the nation. The especial demand, then, made on our statesmen, and on that intelligent people which, as it appears, leads the statesmen, instead of being led by them, is, “ How shall we use our victories ? ” We have no longer the right to say that the difficult questions will settle themselves. We must not say that Providence will take care of them. We must not say that we are trying experiments. The time for all this has gone by. We have won victories. We are going to win more. We must show we know how to: use them.
As our armies advance, for instance, very considerable regions of territory come, for the time, under the military government of the United States. If we painted a map of the country, giving to the Loyal States each its individual chosen color, and to the Rebel States their favorite Red or Black, we should find that the latter were surrounded by a strip of that circumambient and eternal Blue which indicates the love and the strength of the National Government. The strip is here broad, and there narrow. It is broad in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It stretches up in a narrow line along the Sea Islands and the Atlantic coast. What do we mean to do with this strip, while it is in the special charge of the nation ? Do we mean to leave it to the chapter of accidents, as we have done ? A few charitable organizations have kept the Sea Islands along, so that they are a range of flourishing plantations, as they used to be. A masterly inactivity, on the other hand, leaves the northern counties of Virginia, this summer, within the very sight of the Capitol, to be the desert and disgrace which they were when they were the scenes of actual war. A handful of banditti rides through them when it chooses, and even insults the communications of our largest army. The people of that State are permitted to point at this desolation, and to say that such are the consequences of Federal victories. For another instance, take the “Four-Million question.” These four million negroes, from whose position the war has sprung, are now almost all set free, in law. A very large number of them — possibly a quarter part of them —are free in fact. One hundred and thirty thousand of them are in the national army. With regard to these men the question is not, “ What are you going to do with them when the war is done ? ” but, “ What will you do with them to - day and to - morrow ? ” Your duty is to use victory in the moment of victory. You are not to wait for its last ramification before you lead in peace and plenty, which ought to follow close in its first footsteps.
To an observing and sensitive nation it seems as if all these questions, and many others 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 PostOffice 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 their masters. They found themselves in cities where every condition of life was different from their old home. It was hardly to be expected that in one of these cases the results should be as cheerful or as favorable as in the other. Nor was it to be supposed that the policy to be pursued, in two such cases, should be in outward form the same.
But the country has, on the whole, in the various different conditions of these questions, had the advantage of great administrative ability. General Butler, General Banks, and General Saxton are three men who may well he satisfied with their military record, if it shall bear the test of time as well as their administrative successes in this department bid fair to do. We can be reconciled, in a measure, to gross failure and want of system in other places, when we observe the successes which have been wrought out for the blacks, in different ways, under the policy of these three statesmen. For we believe that in that policy the principles are to be found by which the Government ought at, once to direct all its policy in the use of its victories. We believe those principles are most adequately stated in General Butler’s General Order No. 46, issued at Fort Monroe on the fifth of December last. For General Banks has had his hands tied, from the beginning, by the unfortunate exemption from the Emancipation Proclamation of the first two districts in Louisiana. Considering the difficulties by which he was thus entangled, we have never seen but he used to the best his opportunities. General Saxton’s islanddistrict has been so small, and in a measure so peculiar, that it may be urged that the result learned there would not be applicable on the mainland, on a large scale. But General Butler has had all the negroes of the seaboard of Virginia and North Carolina to look after. He has given us a census of them, — and we have already official returns of their status. There seems no reason why what has been done there may not be done anywhere.
In General Butler’s department, there were, in the beginning of April, sixtyeight thousand eight hundred and fortyseven negroes. Of these, eight thousand three hundred and forty-four were soldiers, who had voluntarily enlisted into the service of the United States. These men enlisted with no bounty but what the General so well named as the “ great boon awarded to each of them, the result of the war, — Freedom for himself and his race forever.” They enlisted, knowing that at that time the Government promised them but ten dollars a month. In view of these facts, we consider the proportion of soldiers, nearly one in eight, extraordinary, — though we are aware that the number includes many who had not lived in those counties, who came into our lines with the purpose of enlisting. These simple figures involve the first feature of the true policy in the “ Four-Million question.” The war offers the negroes this priceless bounty. Let them fight for it. Let us enlist them, to the last man we can persuade to serve.
“If you do that,” says Brazen-Face, “ you have left on your hands a horde of starving imbeciles, women, and orphans, to support, from whom you have cruelly separated their able-bodied men.” No, Brazen - Face, we have no such thing. In the month of March the Government had to supply rations in the district we have named to only Seven thousand eight hundred and fifty persons who were members of the families of these soldiers,—the cost being about one dollar a month for each of them. Now the State of Massachusetts, dear BrazenFace, supplies “State-aid” to the families of its soldiers ; and for this support, in this very city of yours, it pays on the average five times as much in proportion as the United States has to pay for the families of these colored soldiers. Nay, you may even take all the persons relieved by Government in General Butler’s district, — the number is sixteen thousand seven hundred and sixteen, —count them all as the families of soldiers, which not one-half of them are, and the whole support which they all receive from Government is not half as much as the families of the same number of soldiers are costing the State of Massachusetts. So much for the expense of this system. There is no money-bounty, and the “ family-aid ” is but one - fifth of that we pay in the case of our own brothers. The figures in General Saxton’s district are as gratifying. We have not the Louisiana statistics at hand. And we have not learned that anybody has attempted any statistics in the District of Columbia, or on the Mississippi River. But this illustration, in two districts where the enlistment of colored troops has been pushed to the very edge of its development, is enough to make out another point in the policy of victory, which is, that the colored soldier is the cheapest soldier whom we have in our lines, though we pay him, as of course we should do, full pay.
How is this cheapness 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 he 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, 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 poorhouses 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 General Banks’s Order No. 38, issued March 22, providing for a board of education, and a tax upon property to establish schools for black and for white children. We have no fears that such results will be slow, if the enfranchised peasantry, one million or four million, have the right to work on their own land, or to accept the highest wage that offers,—if they find they are not arbitrarily removed from their old homes, —and if the protection of those homes is, in the first instance, intrusted to themselves.
These are the first-fruits of freedom for them. For us they are the legitimate use of victory. It only remains that we shall mildly, but firmly, instruct all officers of the Government that it is time for some policy to be adopted which shall involve such uses of victory. The country will be encouraged, the moment it sees that the freedmen are finding their proper places in the new civilization. The country expects its rulers not to wait for chapters of accidents or for volunteer boards to work out such policy, but themselves to provide the system of administration, and the intelligent men who shall promptly and skilfully avail themselves of every victory.