Carl Schurz, in his speech at the Cooper Institute, in New-York, put to his audience a pertinent inquiry: 'You ask me, What shall we do with our negroes, who are now 4,000,000? And I ask you, What will you do with them when they will be 8,000,000—or rather, what will they do with you?
Surely, surely the question involves the greatest problem of the age.
If our fathers had met the question seventy years ago, we should not now behold the spectacle of 6,000,000 of our people in rebellion, and an army of 400,000 men arrayed against the integrity of the Union. And we may well profit by the example so far as to ask ourselves the question, What will be the condition of our country and of our posterity, fifty years hence, if we, too, shirk the question as painful and difficult of solution?
Whether ultimate and universal emancipation will be one of the necessary modes of dealing with it, time must show. In the mean time there is a question immediately pressing upon us. Day by day our armies are advancing among them, and every news of a contest that comes, brings us accounts of the swarms of 'contrabands' who are flocking to us for protection. At one place alone, Port Royal, S.C., the Government Agent reports that there are at least fifteen thousand slaves deserted by their masters, and thus practically emancipated. Untaught and unwonted to take care of themselves—our armies consuming the fruits of the earth and finding no employment for these 'National Freedmen'—the danger is great that want, and temptation, and the absence of the government to which they have been accustomed, may yet drive them to become lawless hordes, preying on all.
The same state of things must of necessity exist wherever the slave-owner flies from the approach of our armies; and we have now presented to us the alternative of either allowing their state to be worse by reason of their emancipation, or better, according as the wise and the humane among us may deal with the subject.
Some measures, we learn, have already been initiated for the emergency. 'The Educational Commission' of Boston, at the head of which is Governor Andrews; 'The Freedman's Relief Association,' in New-York, with Judge Edmonds as its President; and a similar society in Philadelphia, of which Stephen Colwell is Chairman, are societies of large-hearted men and women, banded together, as they express it, to 'teach the freedmen of the colored race civilization and Christianity; to imbue them with notions of order, industry, economy and self-reliance, and to elevate them in the scale of humanity, by inspiring them with self-respect.'
The task is certainly a high and holy one, and eminently necessary. How far it will be sustained by the Government or the people, or how far the purpose can be carried out with a race who have been intentionally kept in profound ignorance, is part of the great problem that we are to solve. But not all of it, by any means. There is much more for enlightened patriotism and wise humanity yet to do, before the task shall be accomplished and the work begun by the Revolution shall be finished; and to prevent a conflict of races, which can end only in the extermination of one or the other.
The 16,000,000 of natives who were once masters of this whole continent are now dwindled into a few insignificant tribes, 'away among the mountains.' Is such to be the fate of the negro also? Or has the spirit of God's charity so far progressed among us that, unlike our fathers, we can redeem rather than destroy, can emancipate rather than enslave?
Be the answer to those questions what it may, there are other considerations, immediately affecting ourselves as a nation and a race.
Slavery would seem to retard our advancement in both respects.