1861 Vermont proposal to provide work for liberated slaves

This proposal comes from the Library of Congress, in regards to employing liberated Negroes. Very interesting points including all children being raised on the estate until they are 25 years old. Transcribed below.

Sir: We would respectfully submit for your consideration the following proposition to employ liberated Negroes:

If the Government will confiscate the improved estates of rebel planters near Port Royal, S. C., to the extent of twenty thousand acres, we will lease these lands, and employ five thousand liberated Negroes to cultivate them on the following terms:

• 1st. We will pay the Government an annual rent of fifty thousand dollars per annum for the use of the lands; for a term of ten years, they to guarantee us protection from armed bodies of rebels and grant us free ingress and egress to and from the port with supplies and products.
• 2d. Negroes under twenty years of age, we will take as apprentices to remain with us until they are twenty-five years of age. And as a compensation for their services, we will furnish them with food, clothes, comfortable dwellings and an opportunity to attend school three months each year, together with books and all needful articles for obtaining an education, and at the expiration of their term of service, will pay them each the sum of one hundred dollars.
• 3d. Negroes over twenty and under forty years of age, we will take as apprentices, for a term of five years. And as compensation for their services, will furnish them in like manner with food, clothing, dwellings, schooling and books; and at the expiration of their term, will pay each male apprentice of this class the sum of two hundred dollars, and each female apprentice, the sum of one hundred dollars.
• 4th. Negroes over forty and under sixty years of age, we will take as apprentices for a term of five years. And as compensation for their services, furnish them with food, clothing and dwellings during the term, and pay them each the sum of one hundred dollars.
• 5th. Negroes over sixty years of age, we will take as apprentices during life, to receive as compensation for their services, food, clothing and care.
• 6th. All Negro children born on the estates during the term of the lease, we will rear until they are twenty-five years of age, in the same manner and on the same terms as are proposed in section second for those apprenticed under twenty years of age.

This proposition to be binding on us must be accepted on or before the 20th day of January, A. D , 1862; as it would be necessary for us to commence making our arrangements by that time to enable us to produce a crop of cotton next season.

If this enterprise should prove as successful as we anticipate, thousands of others would be willing to engage in similar ones next season; and thus all the slaves could be provided for, a large revenue derived by the Government and an abundant supply of cotton produced in a few years.

Yours respectfully,
ELLIS, BRITTON, & EATON.

From An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera