Something must be done right speedily for the myriad of blacks whom we
shall soon have on our hands. Barracooning contrabands by thousands may
do for the present, but how as to the morrow? Let it be repeated again
and again, that they who argue against touching the Negro question _at
present_ are putting off from day to day an evil which becomes terrible
as it is delayed. It can _not_ be let alone. Already those in power at
Washington are terrified at its extent, but fear to act, owing to
'abolition,' while all the time the foul old political ties and
intrigues are gathering closely about. Let us cut the knot betimes, act
bravely and manfully, and settle the difficulty ere it settles us.
Something must be done, and that right early.

But what is to become of the freed blacks? Again and again does this
preposterous bugbear rise up to prove, by the terror which it excites,
the vast ignorance of the subject which prevails in this country, and
the small amount of deliberate reasoning generally bestowed on matters
of the most vital importance. Reader, if you would answer it, go to
facts. You have probably all your life accepted as true the statement
that the black when free promptly becomes an idle, worthless vagabond.
You have believed that a _majority_ of the free blacks in the North are
good for nothing. Now I tell you calmly and deliberately, and
challenging inquiry, that _this is not true_. Admitting that about
one-fifth of them are so, you have but a weak argument. As for the
forlorn, unacclimated exiles in Canada, where there is no demand for the
labor which they are peculiarly fit to render, they are not a case in
point. The black servants, cooks, barbers, white-washers, carpet-beaters
and grooms of Baltimore and Philadelphia, which form the four-fifths
majority of free blacks in those cities, are not idle vagabonds. Above
all, reader, I beg of you to read the dispassionate and calmly written
_Cotton Kingdom_ of Frederick Law Olmstead, recently published by Mason