Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/56

54 Let it be observed, that we are not ordered to issue the full dependent ration to all poor and needy blacks, but only to give them necessary sustenance, and prevent positive suffering. With the families of soldiers it is otherwise. They receive the fixed and full allowance. To give the poor and dependent enough to sustain them in indolence was never intended. To give them enough to encourage and stimulate them to help themselves is what we have endeavored to do. The difference between this and the full ration may therefore be properly considered a saving to the government in the administration of this charity.

The balance of accounts for the year would have been upon the other side, if the abandoned farms and turpentine plantations of this District, or even half of them, had been in the hands of the superintendent of negro affairs. The agent of the Treasury Department had the sole management of these farms. And while they were occupied in many instances by colored lessees, and almost wholly worked by them, the department of negro affairs was not pecuniarily benefited thereby. In matter of fact it is the same thing however, and the earnings of the negroes within our lines in North Carolina, have far exceeded the expenses of the government on their behalf. When the management of the Freedmen, and of the abandoned lands shall be confided to the same hands, so that they may be settled upon them, and protected in their culture and care, it admits of no doubt that their labor will both prove remunerative to themselves and a source of new wealth to the country. The manufacturers of the North will scarcely be able to supply the South, in those swift coming days when almost every negro will be a cash paying customer.

For the present it is plain that the negroes must be sheltered under the protecting wing of the government, and be trained into self-reliance and independence. They need a special agency to manage their affairs at the nation's capital. They will require for a time a central superintendence in each State that has been afflicted with slavery. At least until the return of the seceded States into the Union, and the enactment by them of new laws in the interest of freedom, this national tutilage of the negro must continue. Otherwise he will not have an even