1. We are aware that one objection to our plan of placing the freedmen
in a comparatively independent position from their old masters and their
posterity, is its _magnitude_. But that is no valid reason why it
should not be adopted. If it cannot be wholly accomplished in a
generation or a century, let it be done, so far as it can be, in our
generation, and continued by our successors until it shall be finished.
Under God, Moses undertook to lead the children of Israel out of
Egyptian bondage into the promised land. In doing it they were forty
years in the wilderness, but in due time the thing was accomplished and
passed into history. The magnitude of the project and the time required
for its accomplishment were no objections to its being undertaken. It is
true we have no Moses to lead the freedmen into our western prairies,
but we have the same God to work under that Moses had.
2. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, when it
began its work, had no expectation of converting the world to
Christianity in a generation or a century; but that was no reason why it
should not organize and go to work, leaving for its successors to finish
what it then only began. The same is true of the Home Missionary Society
work, and that of the American Missionary Association, which has the
freedmen under its care especially. The work of both of these societies
will be greatly facilitated by taking the freedmen from the clutches of
the old slave oligarchy, and placing them in an independent civil
position on our boundless prairies, and in cities and villages where
they can care for themselves, their families, and their country, with
none to molest nor make them afraid; a work which neither of the above
societies can do, under their present constitutions.
Where they are, Col. Preston, of Virginia, in a paper addressed to the
American Missionary Association at its annual meeting said: "There is no
place for them as legislators, and no room for them among the whites as
doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, architects, or artists. By
other pursuits they must gain their livelihood, and for other pursuits
they must be trained."
It will be observed that agriculture is left out of the colonel's
catalogue, and, of course, must be included in the "other pursuits" by
which the freedmen "must gain their livelihood." Now we propose to place
them on the best farming lands on this continent, where they can not
only gain a "livelihood," but qualify themselves for any and all of the
above occupations and professions, with no rifle clubs to keep them in
subjection to the ruling class of whites.
President Fairchild, of Berea College, said that the above quotation was
a "leaden weight hung upon the neck of the colored youth."
Our plan proposes to put them in a position to shake off that "leaden
weight," and rise in the scale of humanity in consonance with their just
deserts.
It can but commend itself to the friends of the freedmen.