I desire to echo your suggestion made to-day after sermon, and I hope for an efficient movement at the Wednesday evening meeting in behalf of the freedmen.
Although the
Government of the
United States ought to serve out rations, and to protect the poor people from the suffering from hunger impending this winter, there will still be large room left for private charity.
Labor disorganized, fields wasted, crops unmade, planters impoverished and demoralized, the freedmen uncertain, half protected, they and their old masters mutually doubtful of each other, the poor white hostile in great measure, and all the victims more of their ignorance and of antecedent circumstances than of present bad intentions,—this is the picture a large part of the
South now exhibits.
We in the
North are in comfort and prosperity.
We must intervene for the immediate preservation of the colored people of the
South, powerless for the moment to save themselves, and, by wise and prudent generosity, help to float them over, until a new crop can be made.
Acting in connection with the
Freedmen's Bureau, and with sensible and practical agents, a million of dollars raised by the
North before
Christmas, while in reality and comparatively a small sum, would do unspeakable good.
I presume I shall not be able to attend the meeting; but I beg the privilege of helping its purpose, though absent.
And therefore I write
