Dayton daily empire. [volume] (Dayton [Ohio]) 1850-1865, 1865-07-31
A Restored Union.

"lmportant Notice TO Planters and Freed.
men," dated "Brookhavan, Miss, June
Is, 1885," and signed al. Roberts, First
Lieutenant and Provost Marshal Of Freed
men"
Planters ere authorized to make contracts
with the freedmen, which will be submitted to
the Provost Marshal OF Freedmen, aud if found
by him fair and honest to the laborers will be
confirmed and approved. All such contracts
must secure support maintenance, clothing,
medical attendance and such wages or share Of
the net profit of carrying on the plantation as
agreed upon. The freedmen so employed are
entitled to the following quantity Of land for
private cultivation
First aud seeond-clAss hands with families
one acre
! First and second-class hands without fami-
lies, one half acre
| Third class, with families, one half acre.
| Third class without families, one quarter
acre.
The time Of labor shall be ten hours be-
tween daylight and dark in summer, and nine
hours in winter, except Saturday afternoon,
and all Sunday shall be at the disposal of the
laborers
This is one Of thousand evidences
which may be cited to show, that the con-
dition Of the white people of the South is
now one of the most object slavery a
condition which prevails generally through
the entire limits of the late Confederate,
States. OF course the people thereof being
rebels, deserve it, and it would be highly
disloydl in us TO intimate that such con
dition of things is not all right. A dis
loyal man might see, in the condition of
the South to-day, some resemblance to
that Of those classes in New England, who
were occasionally, for the public, and
their own souls good, pilloried, set in the
stocks, hanged, burned and drowned in
the days of the Pilgrim Fathers, and ar
que therefrom a speedy return toTheocratic
Puritanism, as the probable form in which
the Union will emerge from the raging
fires of intestine strife.
On the other hand, some, better than the
best Of their fellows, might regard the
present condition of the inhabitants Of
those States-the guilty of rebellion and
the innocent alike,-simply as a Just pun
ishment fore-ordained OF God against them
for having so long held in bondage Others
of their species.
We do not propose to take either side in
such controversy, but are led to inquire,
in view Of the facts, how far the expert
ment of war has been a success in restoring
the Union.
From military point of view, the war
has been a success, to the complete and
entire subjugation Of the rebellious bel
ligerent, but the very completeness of that
success augments the magnitude of the
"failure to restore the Union" A sub
jugated South does not make restored
Union. Unless other means of recon-
struction than those now being employed
are resortsd to, the Southern States must
ever remain as now, to us, the Poland of
America.
The only hope of this country is, that time
and the inexorable "logic of events" shall
thoroughly demonstrate to the satisfaction
of the people, that the Union of attraction
procured by due regard on the part of all
to diverse as well as common interests, is
better than the Union of compulsion,
which sacrifices the interests of all other
sections for the aggrandizem ent of one.
The former was the Union of our fathers
"A republican form of government. The
latter is the Union Of the day--a consoli-
dated despotism.