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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies, 1852. (search)
a ride on horseback every day; but this, I think, I shall be able to do after a little while, when things are reduced more to a system, and meanwhile I am contented, or reasonably so, and jolly. When General Banks reached Louisiana, one of the first things demanding attention was the condition of the blacks. There were in the State probably over two hundred thousand slaves, three fourths of whom had flocked within the lines of the army. Within these lines President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had, by its express terms, no operation. The situation of the negroes who clustered around the military posts was most distressing. Still slaves in law, they were no longer slaves in fact, for our officers and soldiers neither desired nor were permitted to aid in retaining them in servitude; and without the assistance of our forces, the former masters, whatever claim they might assert under the Proclamation, were powerless. The negroes were without clothes, food, shelter, or pro