Creative Books

The Secretary,
in a letter to the agent, had said, that, after being received into our
service, they could not, without great injustice, be restored to their
masters, and should therefore be fitted to become self-supporting
citizens. The President was reported to have said freely, in private,
that negroes who were within our lines, and had been employed by the
Government, should be protected in their freedom. No official assurance
of this had, however, been given; and its absence disturbed the
societies in their formation. At one meeting of the Boston society
action was temporarily arrested by the expression of an opinion by a
gentleman present, that there was no evidence showing that these people,
when educated, would not be the victims of some unhappy compromise. A
public meeting in Providence, for their relief, is said to have broken
up without action, because of a speech from a furloughed officer of a
regiment stationed at Port Royal, who considered such a result the
probable one.


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