THE FREEDMEN.
The varying fortunes of the Freedmen through the year have added another illustration to the many which combine to show that an uneducated mass of men is always an uncertain quantity in the national problem. That these once slaves in the South have been wronged and abused there can be no doubt. Advantage has been taken of their ignorance in contracts for labor, and in the manner of their pay. They have been misled and intimidated in the attempt to exercise their right of franchise. It would be useless to deny the facts. The thousands who have left their homes and associations in Mississippi and Louisiana for the chances of new settlement in Kansas, are witnesses as powerful in their silence as in their speech. They have not gone for nothing.
We have no apology to offer for those who have made it impossible for them to remain in peace, and who have sought by force to keep them from departing. But, on the other hand, it becomes us to remember that these evils spring not so much from local as from general causes. The same wrongs are perpetrated and endured, to some extent, wherever there are similar states of society. Ignorance is always at a disadvantage, whether it wants to work or to vote. It is always in bonds to some power and will beyond its own. New York, and perhaps even Chicago, knows something of abused labor and a controlled vote. The local causes which increase the evil may need thorough treatment, but that is not ours either to prescribe or to administer. It is the general cause which we may consider, and to which we are directing all our energies—not to the restraint or punishment of those who do the wrong, but to the removal of the ignorance which gives such large occasion for the wrong.
For our work is foundational and steady. Amid all social and political changes the need for it remains unchanged. We are not engaged in pulling up the shallow roots of weeds, nor in planting flower-beds with annuals, but in sub-soiling our Southern fields, and so preparing the ground for crops of better quality from year to year. The only permanent guarantee against the abuse of any race or class, either North or South, is the diffusion of Christian intelligence among the abused, and of the spirit of Christian love among those who abuse them. This is our work.
We have no word of criticism for those who have chosen to remove to another State. Liberty of emigration is one of the most unquestionable rights of freemen. But there is no charm in the name of Kansas which will make the ignorant or the timid either wise or brave. Let the masses of the colored race be once armed with intelligence, and they can stay or go with equal impunity. Without it they will be anywhere at the mercy of either force or fraud.
Nor is the work of the Association to be limited by any local changes among the Freedmen. The removal of seven thousand men, women and children from so vast a population leaves no noticeable void; nor, even if the proportions of this exodus shall reach the highest numbers at which it has been estimated, will it perceptibly diminish the millions of a race which is year by year increasing in numbers and in thrift.
The only plea which these facts make to us is, that we redouble our efforts to forge for them the armor which alone can be their complete defence.
The Association has not, therefore, felt itself called upon to divert its efforts to the field thus newly occupied. If, as the outcome of this movement, there shall be permanent and large settlements of the colored people in new localities, it may become needful for us carefully to consider the claim which they may make on us for such service as we are trying to render their brethren in the South.
We have cheerfully forwarded such gifts of money and clothing as have been entrusted to us to local agencies, in which we had reason to have the greatest confidence, for the relief of the present distress, and have kept ourselves to our main work.