Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 11.
Frank Moore, Ed.

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[479] the privileges of freedom. Will not this necessarily make them discontented? or, if not, you ought, in gratitude, and perhaps in policy, to free their wives and children. This will give you, instead of half a million, a million and a half or two millions of free negroes in your midst. That is more than one half of the present slave population of the Confederate States.

How long would slavery last under this strain? Is not your proposition Abolitionism in disguise? No, Messrs. Editors, we could not live in a country inhabited by such a class. Either they or we must be forced to leave. Which would it be, and where and how would they go? Abraham Lincoln emancipates all he can steal. You would take and emancipate one half at a word, or, at all events, you would take and emancipate that portion without whom the other portion would be valueless and a charge upon the country. No ; our cause is not so desperate, nor its condition so low, as to need the aid of an army of free negroes. There are stout arms and brave hearts enough among the white men of the Confederacy to win and secure its freedom, and he who would call upon the poor, ignorant slave to fight his battles, for the boon of a worthless freedom, must not only be deeply despondent, but regardless of the duties he owes to his country, to his negro, and himself. It is not for the slave either to win freedom for the white men, as you would have him, or take the yoke of subjugation upon him, as would the Yankee. But it is for the Southern white man to achieve his own indepence, to secure himself in the possession of his slave, and. to secure to the slave the possession of a good master.--Richmond Enquirer, November 4.