The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1866-01-05

I" do order and declare that all persons
held ss slaves within designAted States, or
parts Of States, are and henceforward shall
BE- free, and that the Executive Government
Of the United States, including the military
and naval authorities thereof, win recognize
and maintain the freedom Of said persons''---
thus ordered Abraham Lincoln, in his Proc
lamation Of Emancipation, and thus the ma
ton came by its wards. What shall be done
with them? In answering the question
prejudice should not be invoked, passion
should be laid aside; all prepossessions as to
an incompatibility in the frsetenancy Of the
soil of the Republic by both races should be
discarded; there should be no assumption Of
an impossibility of the two races existing to-
gether in any other relation than that of mas
ter aud slave. The spirit that fostered slavery
and degraded manhood, and demanded for the
institution unlimited expansion, has already
passed in Judgment upon the freedmen and
decreed them TO be unfit for other than chat
telsm. After years of bondage, after long
years of studied and enforced exclusion from
the simplest and most elementary educational
advantages, after sleeping the negro intellect
in ignorance and superstition and brutahsm,
he is not philosopher like Stuart Mill, nor .
shrewd business man like Astor, aud, for
sooth, the negro is totally untitled for the en-
joyment of any fraction of his new found
liberty. Those impressions prevail through
out the South, and largely throughout the
North. They must be removed. They are
the .fons ct origo mali in Southern social and
political reorganization. The negroes are
fee free bythe mandate Of the Government,
and the whole executive power is pledged to
maintain that freedom. Slavery in the United
it will be permitted to exist; no system of
peonage will be tolerated. The largest
measure Of liberty possible, without degen-
Grating into icentioasness, must be given
them. Nor of this measure should late
Southern slave-masters be permitted to be
the judges. The freedmen are the wards of
the Government. The latter assumed the re-
lationship. 1t should faithfully perform the
from the injustice of the whites and from their
own ignorance and false impressions. The
population of the South, white and black Is
in transition state the latter passing into
the condition Of freedom which the war ac-
complished, the former adjusting itself to the
change thus consummated. In this crisis the
Freedmen's Bureau has been most necessary
Department of the Government, and it is we'll
that it is to be continued.
The report of Gen. HowARD makes many
interesting developments. South Carolina,
parent of rebellion, transcends the other
States in its cruelty to the freedmen. The
report says that all accounts from the interior
of that State "are replete with instances Of
violence and cruelty toward the freedmen"
From North Carolina, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi and Texas the reports are more
favorable.
The New York Times makes summing
up of some of the operations of the Freed
men Bureau as shown by the report:
This new department Of the government las
it might almost be called has had charge,
since March last, of all lands abandoned by
the rebels, and Of their rental and sale to
freedmen, of the education. labor, and moral
and industrial condition of some millions of
persons just freed from slzyery. 1t has con-
trolled during that time 76S, $50 acres OF land
of which the largest amoant was in Georgia
and South Carolipa-435,OO 600 acres. Resides
this, 1896 pieces of town property are now
held by them; and ,l77 have been restored,
as we'll as SO, l76 acres of land. The occups.
tion, and sometimes the sale or leasing OF
abandoned lands, or of property of persons in
arms against the government have been and
will continue to be a fruitful source Of dr.
Guilty. The law founding the bureau undoubt-
edly gave the impression that the lands of
disioyal owners would be divided among the
freedmen. The impression was strengthened
by our own soldiers and officers. and often by
spectators, so that the negroes have come
confidently to believe in general partition Of
lands among them, to take place on Christ
mas. The bureau are doing their best to cot
rect this dangerous notion.
With regard to labor, Gen. Howard required
that the freedmen should be free to choose
their own employers, and be paid for their
labor. He demanded that agreements should
be voluntary acts, approved BY proper officials
and obligatory on both parties. He very wise-
II
order to drain off the superhuous freedmen
who we're crowding the cities, he established
intelligence offices; for others, he permitted
industrial schools to be established by private
persons, and aided them with means; for still
others be opened government farms, in order
TO employ idle hands, and prepare them for .
more skillfal agriculture by and by. Com
mon schools were founded or aided by the
bureau to advance this great mass Of ignorant
people. and but for the protection and en-
couragement Of this department, few OF the
schools which have already done such vast
good ut the South could have been continued.
The Times adds:
Without following through the most valuar
BILE reports of 3he Assistant Commissioners of
the Bureau and Gen. Hovards scouclusiops,
we may observe that no reasonable man can
read these calm official documents without
feeling that thus far, wherever . fair trial has
been given, Free Labor is proved . success,
and also, without profound conviction that
Justice to the South and humanity to the
blacks, and national honor, al demand hat
for some time yet military forces ofthe United
States be retained in the South, and its guar.
dian protection both over negsoe1 and whites,
through the Freedmen's BureA1 ekenld. be
continued.
JrDcs 1aszzA vhe ~ bsss : reat1sst Of
Illinois for nssr 81 ysazs y ~uitinx rel
lections of eeeiv iinnop = a. Prsiuss 0eaae.
LAnxrrss d sdikig ifs 4 Brssn, y
Paris EssiRssm, whieA = ~ - talsShsd
with the hitherto unpsbli1hsd coessspoodence
with the Cosnsem GrrccIoLI.
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