Thus freedom acts on the mind. It obliges you to seek a livelihood—to look up work such as you can do, that you may support yourselves and your families. It sets you to thinking how you can earn wages, and how you can best spend them. Freedom, remember, has its cares and anxieties as well as its benefits.
LABOR.
Don’t fall into the mistake of some, that freedom means idleness. No such thing. Free people have to work, and some of them have to work very hard even to get their bread. Some of the free colored people have by their own labor gained the means of a comfortable livelihood, and made themselves respectable. You can do the same, if you will use the same diligence. By industry you will soon be able to support yourselves and families, and lay up something perhaps for a rainy day. Thus you may secure something to depend on when you are sick or old and can’t work. There will no doubt be penny savings-banks, where you can put some of your money, and where it will not only be safe, but will increase. We hope, if there are such banks, that you will take advantage of them.
At first, and before you get well a going, the government, aided by good people, is ready to lend you a helping hand. This is done to give you a chance to get used to your new situation. But the sooner you stop leaning on the government and on the help of the whites, the better for yourselves and for all concerned.
Don’t refuse to work then, even at low wages. Work at low wages is better than idleness. The Bible says, he that will not work, neither shall he eat. It says also, “Be diligent in business.”
Besides, if you are idle, and look for support to the whites, the slaveholders will throw it in our teeth, and say, “There, you see negroes wont work, unless there is a master over them.” And so we shall be ashamed, not knowing what to say in reply. But if you are industrious and willing to work even at low wages, they can’t say this.
If the government wants able-bodied men among you for the army, to dig trenches, to build forts, or to enlist as soldiers, let it not be said that you refused. If you are invited to go in as field laborers, go in and work. You work now as freemen, not as slaves; and the money which is paid you, you can lay out for food and clothing, and for any thing else that is proper. In this country nobody expects to live without work.
CLEANLINESS.
Industry is one good thing. But there are other habits also we would recommend. Cleanliness is very important. Black or white, a dirty person is a disgusting object. Even a poor person can possess the virtue of cleanliness. Soap and water are not very dear things; but if one don’t use them, they might as well cost guineas instead of coppers. What do you think of a mother who keeps neither herself nor her children clean? Who likes to enter a cabin or cottage where the dirt has to be wiped off a seat before a decent man or woman can sit down upon it? A clean person will see that even the patched garments he is obliged to wear are at least free from dirt. No matter how poor the house is you live in, it should be kept clean. The Bible says, “Wash you, make you clean.” Though this means soul washing, yet it shows God loves cleanliness.