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It
seems proper, before attempting to record
the achievements of the negro soldiers in
the war of the Rebellion, that we should
consider the state of public opinion
regarding the negroes at the outbreak of the
war; also, in connection therewith, to note
the rapid change that took place during the
early part of the struggle.
For some cause, unexplained in a general sense, the
white people in the Colonies and in the
States, came to entertain against the
colored races therein a prejudice, that
showed itself in a hostility to the latter's
enjoying equal civil and political rights
with themselves. Various reasons are
alleged for it, but the difficulty of really
solving the problem lies in the fact that
the early settlers in this country came
without prejudice against color. The
Negro, Egyptian, Arab, and other colored
races known to them, lived in European
countries, where no prejudice, on account of
color existed. How very strange then,
that a feeling antagonistic to the negroes
should become a prominent feature in the
character of the European emigrants to these
shores and their descendants. It has
been held by some writers that the American
prejudice against the negroes was occasioned
by their docility and unresenting spirit.
Surely no one acquainted with the Indian
will agree that he is docile or wanting in
spirit, yet occasion ally there is
manifested a prejudice against him; the
recruiting officers in Massachusetts refused
to enlist Indians, as well as negroes, in
regiments and companies made up of white
citizens, though members of both races,
could sometimes be found in white regiments.
During the
[Pg. 94]
rebellion of 1861-5, some Western regiments
had one or two negroes and Indians in them,
but there was no general enlistment of
either race in white regiments.* The
objection was on account of color, or, as
some writers claim, by the fact of the
races—negro and Indian†
—having been enslaved. Be the
cause what it may, a prejudice, strong,
unrelenting, barred the two races from
enjoying with the white race equal civil and
political rights in the United States.
So very strong had that prejudice grown
since the Revolution, enhanced it may be by
slavery and docility, that when the
rebellion of 1861 burst forth, a feeling
stronger than law, like a Chinese wall only
more impregnable, encircled the negro, and
formed a barrier betwixt him and the army.
Doubtless peace—a long peace—lent its aid
materially to this state of affairs.
Wealth, chiefly, was the dream of the
American from 1815 to 1860, nearly half a
century; a period in which the negro was
friendless, save in a few strong-minded,
iron-hearted men like John Brown in
Kansas. Wendell Philips in New England,
Charles Sumner in the United
States Senate, Horace Greeley
in New York and a few others, who dared, in
the face of strong public sentiment, to
plead his cause, even from a humane
platform. In many places he could not
ride in a street car that was not inscribed,
"Colored persons ride in this car."
The deck of a steamboat, the box cars of the
railroad, the pit of the theatre and the
gallery of the church, were the locations
accorded him. The church lent its
influence to the rancor and bitterness of a
prejudice as deadly as the sap of the Upas.
To describe public opinion respecting the negro a half
a century ago, is no easy task. It was just
budding into
*I arrived in New York in August, 1862. from
Valparaiso, Chili. on the steamship
"Bio-Bio," of Boston, and in company with
two Spaniards, neither of whom could speak
English, enlisted in a New York regiment.
We were sent to the rendezvous on one of the
islands in the harbor. The third day
after we arrived at the barracks. I
was sent with one of my companions to carry
water to the cook, an aged negro, who
immediately recognized me, and in such a way
as to attract the attention of the corporal,
who reported the matter to the commanding
officer, and before I could give the cook
the hint, he was examined by the officer of
the day. At noon I was accompanied by
a guard of honor to the launch, which landed
me in New York. I was a negro, that
was all; how it was accounted for on the
rolls I cannot say. I was honorably
discharged, however, without receiving a
certificate to that effect.
†The
Indians referred to are many of those
civilized and living as citizens In
the several .States of the Union.
[Pg. 95]
maturity when DeTocqueville visited the
United States, and, as a result of that
visit, he wrote, from observation, a pointed
criticism upon the manners and customs, and
the laws of the people of the United States.
For fear that I might be thought
over-doing—heightening—giving too much
coloring to the strength, and extent and
power of the prejudice against the negro I
quote from that distinguished writer, as he
clearly expressed himself under the heading,
"Present and Future condition of the
three races inhabiting the United States."
He said of the negro:
I see that in a certain portion of the
United States at the present day, the legal
barrier which separates the two races is
tending to fall away, but not that which
exists in the manners of the country.
Slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which
it has given birth remains stationary.
Whosoever has inhabited the United States,
must have perceived, that in those parts of
the United States, in which the negroes are
no longer slaves, they have in nowise drawn
nearer the whites; on the contrary,
the prejudice of the race appears to be
stronger in those States which have
abolished slavery, than in those where it
still exists. And, nowhere is it so
intolerant as in the states where servitude
has never been known. It is true, that
in the North of the Union, marriages may be
legally contracted between negroes and
whites, but public opinion would stigmatize
a man, who should content himself with a
negress, as infamous. If oppressed,
they may bring an action at law, but they
will find none but whites among their
judges, and although they may legally serve
as jurors, prejudice repulses them for that
office. In theatres gold cannot
procure a seat for the servile race beside
their former masters, in hospitals they lie
apart. They are allowed to invoke; the
same divinity as the whites. The gates
of heaven are not closed against those
unhappy beings; but their inferiority is
continued to the very confines of the other
world. The negro is free, but he can
share, neither the rights, nor the labor,
nor the afflictions of him, whose equal he
has been declared to be, and he cannot meet
him upon fair terms in life or death."
DeTocqueville, as is seen, wrote with much bitterness
and sarcasm, and, it is but fair to state,
makes no alluusion
to any exceptions to the various conditions
of affairs that he mentions. In all
cases matters might not have been exactly as
bad as he pictures them, but as far as the
deep-seated prejudice against the negroes,
and indifference to their rights and
elevation are concerned, the facts will
freely sustain the views so forcibly
presented.
The negro had no remembrance of the country of his
[Pg. 96]
ancestry, Africa, and he abjured their
religion. In the South he had no
family; women were merely the temporary
sharer of his pleasures; his master's cabins
were the homes of his children during their
childhood. While the Indian perished
in the struggle for the preservation of his
home, his hunting grounds and his freedom,
the negro entered into slavery as soon as he
was born, in fact was often purchased in the
womb, and was born to know, first, that he
was a slave. If one became free, he
found freedom harder to bear than slavery;
half civilized, deprived of nearly all
rights, in contact with his superiors in
wealth and knowledge, exposed to the rigor
of a tyrannical prejudice moulded into laws,
he contented himself to be allowed to live.
The Negro race, however, it must be remembered, is the
only race that has ever come in contact with
the European race, and been able to
withstand its atrocities and oppression; all
others, like the Indian, whom they could not
make subservient to their use, they have
destroyed. The Negro race, like the
Israelites, multiplied so rapidly in
bondage, that the oppressor became alarmed,
and began discussing methods of safety to
himself. The only people able to cope
with the Anglo-American or Saxon, with any
show of success, must be of patient
fortitude, progressive intelligence, brave
in resentment and earnest in endeavor.
In spite of his surroundings and state of public
opinion the African lived, and gave birth,
largely through amalgamation with the
representatives of the different races that
inhabited the United States, to a new
race,—the American Negro.
Professor Sampson in his mixed races says:
"The Negro is a now race, and is not the
direct descent of any people that have ever
flourished. The glory of the negro
race is yet to come."
As evidence of its capacity to acquire glory, the
record made in the late struggle furnishes
abundant proof. At the sound of the
tocsin at the North, negro waiter, cook,
barber, boot-black, groom, porter and
laborer stood ready at the enlisting office;
and though the recruiting officer refused to
list his name, he waited like the "patient
ox" for the partition-prejudice-to be
removed. He waited
[Pg. 97]
ROBERT SMALLS, (pilot).
WILLIAM MORRISON, (sailor), A. GRADINE,
(Engineer),
JOHN SMALLS, (sailor).
Four of the crew who. while the white
officers were ashore in Charleston. S. C.
ran off with the Confederate war steamer.
" Planter," passed Fort Sumter and delivered
the vessel to the United States authorities.
On account of the during exploit a special
act of Congress was passed ordering one-half
the value of the captured vessel to be
invested in V. S. bonds, and the interest
thereof to be annually paid them or their
heirs. Robert Small- joined the Union
army, and after the war became active and
prominent in politics.
[Pg. 98]
two years before even the door of the
partition was opened; then he did not
hesitate, but walked in, and with what
effect the world knows.
The war cloud of 1860 still more aroused the bitter
prejudice against the negro at both the
North and South; but he was safer in South
Carolina than in New York, in Richmond than
in Boston.
It is a natural consequence, when war is waged between
two nations, for those on either side to
forget local feuds and unite against the
common enemy, as was done in the
Revolutionary war. How different was
the situation now when the threatened war
was not one between nations, but between
states of the same nation. The feeling
of hostility toward the negro was not put
aside and forgotten as other troublesome
matters were, but the bitterness became
intensified and more marked.
The Confederate Government though organized for the
perpetual enslavement of the negro, fostered
the idea that the docility of the negroes
would allow them to be used for any purpose,
without their having the least idea of
becoming freemen. Some idea may be
formed of public opinion at the South at the
beginning of the war by what Mr.
Pollard, in his history, gives as the
feeling at the South at the close of the
second year of the struggle:
"Indeed, the war had
shown the system of slavery in the South to
the world in some new and striking aspects,
and had removed much of that cloud of
prejudice, defamation, falsehood, romance
and perverse sentimentalism through which
our peculiar institution had been formerly
known to Europe. It had given a better
vindication of our system of
slavery than all the books that could be
written in a generation. It had shown
that slavery was an element of strength to
us; that it had assisted us in our struggle;
that no servile insurrections had taken
place in the South, in spite of the
allurements of our enemy; that the slave had
tilled the soil while his master had fought;
that in large districts, unprotected by our
troops, and with a white population,
consisting almost exclusively of women and
children, the slave had continued his work,
quiet, faithful, and cheerful; and that, as
a conservative element in our social system,
the institution of slavery had withstood the
shocks of war, and been a faithful ally of
our army, although instigated to revolution
by every art of the enemy, and prompted to
the work of assassination and pillage by the
most brutal examples of the Yankee
soldiers."
[Pg. 99] - BLANK
[Pg. 100]
With this view, the whole slave population
was brought to the assistance of the
Confederate Government, and thereby caught
the very first hope of freedom. An
innate reasoning taught the negro that
slaves could not be relied upon to fight for
their own enslavement. To get to the
breastworks was but to get a chance to run
to the Yankees; and thousands of those whose
elastic step kept time with the martial
strains of the drum and fife, as they
marched on through city and town, enroute to
the front, were not elated with the hope of
Southern success, but were buoyant with the
prospects of reaching the North.
The confederates found it no easy task to
watch the negroes and the Yankees too; their
attention could be given to
but one at a time; as a slave expressed it,
"when marsa watch the Yankee, nigger go;
when marsa watch the nigger, Yankee come."
But the Yankees did not always receive him
kindly during the first year of the war.
In his first inaugural, Mr. Lincoln declared
"that the property, peace and security of no
section are to be in anywise endangered by
the new incoming administration.." The
Union generals, except Fremont and
Phelps and a few subordinates, accepted
this as public opinion, and as their guide
in dealing with the slavery question.
That opinion is better expressed in the
doggerel, sung in after months by the negro
troops as they marched along through Dixie:
"McClellan
went to Richmond with two hundred thousand
braves,
He said, 'keep buck the niggers and the Union he would
save."
Little Mac, he had his way, still the Union is in
tears,
And they call for the help of the colored volunteers."
The first two lines expressed the sentiment at the
time, not only of the Army of the Potomoc,
but the army commanders everywhere, with the
exceptions named. The
administration winked at the enforcement of
the fugitive slave bill by the soldiers
engaged in capturing and returning the
negroes coming into the Union lines.*
Undoubted ly it was the idea of the
Government to turn the course of the war
from its rightful channel, or in other
words,—in
* See Appendix. "A."
[Pg. 101] - BLANK
[Pg. 102]
QUARTERS PROVIDED FOR CONTRABANDS.
[Pg. 103]
the restoration of the Union,—to eliminate
the anti-slavery sentiment, which demanded
the freedom of the slaves.
Hon. Elisha R. Potter, of Rhode Island,—"who
may," said Mr. Greeley, "be fairly
styled the hereditary chief of the
Democratic party of that State,"—made a
speech on the war in the State Senate, on
the 10th of August 1861, in which he
remarked:
I have said that the war may
assume another aspect, and be a short and
bloody one. And to such a war—an
anti-slavery nap—it seems to me we are
inevitably drifting. It seems to me
hardly in the power of human wisdom to
prevent it. We may commence the war
without meaning to interfere with slavery;
but let us have one or two battles, and get
our blood excited, and we shall not only not
restore any more slaves, but shall proclaim
freedom wherever we go. And it seems
to me almost judicial blindness on the part
of the South that they do not see that this
must be the inevitable result, if the
contest is prolonged."
This sentiment became bolder daily as the
thinking Union men viewed the army turning
aside from its legitimate purposes, to catch
runaway negroes, and return them.
Party lines were also giving away; men in
the army began to realize the worth of the
negroes as they sallied up to the rebel
breastworks that were often impregnable.
They began to complain, finding the negro
with his pick and spade, a greater
hinderance to their progress than the cannon
balls of the enemy ; and more than one said
to the confederates, when the pickets of the
two armies picnicked together in the
battle's lull, as frequently they did: "We
can whip you, if you keep your negroes out
of your army."
Quite a different course was pursued in the navy.
Negroes were readily accepted all along the
coast on board the war vessels, it being no
departure from the regular and established
practice in the service. The view with
which the loyal friends of the Union began
to look at the negro and the rebellion, was
aptly illustrated in an article in the
Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser in 1801,
which said:
"The Slaves as a MILITARY ELEMENT IN THE
SOUTH.—The total white population of the
eleven States now comprising the Confederacy
is 6,000,000, and, therefore, to fill up the
ranks of the proposed army (600,000) about
ten per cent of the entire white population
will be
[Pg. 104]
required. In any other country than our own
such a draft could not be met, but the
Southern States can furnish that number of
men, and still not leave the material
interests of the country in a suffering
condition. Those who are incapacitated
for bearing arms can oversee the
plantations, and the negroes can go on
undisturbed in their usual labors. In
the North the case is different; the men who
join the army of subjugation are the
laborers, the producers, and the factory
operatives. Nearly every man from that
section, especially those from the rural
districts, leaves some branch of industry to
suffer during his absence. The
institution of slavery in the South alone
enables her to place in the field a force
much larger in proportion to her white
population than the North, or indeed any
country which is dependent entirely on free
labor. The institution is a tower of
strength to the South, particularly at the
present crisis, and our enemies will be
likely to find that the 'moral cancer' about
which their orators are so fond of prating,
is really one of the most effective weapons
employed against the Union by the South.
Whatever number of men may be needed for
this war, we are confident our people stand
ready to furnish. We are all enlisted
for the war, and there must be no holding
back until. the independence of the South is
fully acknowledged."
The
facts already noted became apparent to the
nation very soon, and then came a, change of
procedure, and the war began to be
prosecuted upon quite a different policy.
Gen. McClellan, whose loyalty
to the new policy was doubted, was removed
from the command of the Army of
the Potomac, and slave catching ceased.
The XXXVII Congress convened in Dec. 1861,
in its second session, and passed the
following additional article of war:
"All officers are prohibited from employing
any of the forces under their respective
commands for the purpose of returning
fugitives from service or labor who may have
escaped from any persons to whom such
service or labor is claimed to be due. Any
officer who shall be found guilty by
courtrmartial of violating this article
shall be dismissed from the service."
This was the initatory measure of the new
policy, which progressed to its fulfillment
rapidly. And then what Mr.
Cameron, Secretary of War, had
recommended in December. 1861, and to which
the President objected, very soon developed,
through a series of enactments, in the
arming of the negro; in which the loyal
people of the whole country acquiesced, save
the border states people, who fiercely
opposed it as is shown in the conduct of
Mr.
[Pg. 105]
DRIVING GOV'T. CATTLE
[Pg. 106] - BLANK
[Pg. 107]
Wickliffe, of Kentucky; Salisbury, of
Delaware, and others in Congress.
Public opinion was now changed, Congress had prohibited
the surrender of negroes to the rebels, the
President issued his Emancipation
Proclamation, and more than 150,000 negroes
were fighting for the Union. The
Republican party met in convention at
Chicago, and nominated Mr. Lincoln
for the second term as President of the
United States; the course of his first
administration was now to be approved or
rejected by the people. In the
resolutions adopted, the fifth one of them
related to Emancipation and the negro
soldiers. It was endorsed by a very
large majority of the voters. A writer
in one of the magazines, prior to the
election, thus reviews the resolutions:
"The fifth resolution commits us to the
approval of two measures that have aroused
the most various and strenuous opposition,
the
Proclamation of Emancipation and the use of
negro troops. In reference to the
first, it is to be remembered that it is a
war measure. The express
language of it is: 'By virtue of the
power in me vested as commander-in-chief of
the army and navy of the United States in
time of actual armed rebellion against the
authority and Government of the United
States, and as a fit and necessary war
measure for suppressing said rebellion.'
Considered thus, the Proclamation is not
merely defensible, but it is more; it is a
proper and efficient means of weakening the
rebellion which every person desiring its
speedy overthrow must zealously and perforce
uphold. Whether it is of any legal
effect beyond the actual limits of our
military lines, is a question that need not
agitate us. In due time the supreme
tribunal of the nation will be called to
determine that, and to its decision the
country will yield with all respect and
loyalty. But in the mean time let the
Proclamation go wherever the army goes, let
it go wherever the navy secures a foothold
on the outer border of the rebel territory,
and let it summon to our aid the negroes who
are truer to the Union than their disloyal
masters; and when they have come to us and
put their lives in our keeping, let us
protect and defend them with the whole power
of the nation. Is there any thing
unconstitutional in that? Thank God,
there is not. And he who is willing to
give back to slavery a single person who has
heard the
summons and come within our lines to obtain
his freedom, he who would give up a single
man, woman, or child, once thus actually
freed, is
not worthy the name of American. He
may call himself Confederate, if he will.
"Let it be remembered, also that the Proclamation has
had a very
[Pg. 108]
important bearing upon our
foreign relations. It evoked in behalf
of 6ur country that sympathy on the part of
the people in Europe, whose is the only
sympathy we can ever expect in our struggle
to perpetuate free institutions.
Possessing that sympathy, moreover, we have
had an element in our favor which has kept
the rulers of Europe in wholesome dread of
interference. The Proclamation
relieved us from the false position before
attributed to uh of fighting simply for
national power. It placed uh right in
the eyes of the world, and transferred men's
sympathies from a confederacy fighting for
independence as a means of establishing
slavery, to a nation whose institutions mean
constitutional liberty, and, when fairly
wrought out, must end in universal freedom."
The
change of policy and of public opinion was
be strongly endorsed that it affected the
rebels, who shortly passed a Congressional
measure for arming 200.000 negroes
themselves. What a reversal of things;
what a change of sentiment, in less than
twenty-four months!* Mr.
Lincoln, in justifying the change, is
reported to have said to Judge
Mills, of Wisconsin:
"The slightest knowledge of arithmetic will
prove to any man that the rebel armies
cannot be destroyed with Democratic
strategy. It would sacrifice all the
white men of the North to do it. There
are now in the service of the United States
near two hundred thousand able bodied
colored men, most of them under arms,
defending and acquiring Union territory.
The Democratic strategy demands that these
forces be disbanded, and that the masters be
conciliated by restoring them to slavery.
The black men who now assist Union prisoners
to escape, they are to be converted into our
enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good
will of their masters. We shall have
to fight two nations instead of one.
You cannot conciliate the South if you
guarantee to them ultimate success; and the
experience of the present war proves their
success is inevitable if you fling the
compulsory labor of millions of black men
into their side of the scale. Will you
give our enemies such military advantages as
insure success, and then depend on coaxing,
flattery, and concession to get them back
into the Union? Abandon all the posts
now garrisoned by black men; take two
hundred thousand men from
our side and put them in the battlefield or
cornfield against us, and we would be
compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.
We have to hold territory in inclement and
sickly places; where are the Demo-
---------------
*
"Those who have declaimed loudest against
the employment of negro troops have shown a
lamentable amount of ignorance, and an
equally lamentable lack of common sense.
They know as little of the military history
and martial qualities of the African race as
they do of their own duties as commanders.
All distinguished generals of modern times who have had
opportunity to use negro soldiers, have
uniformly applauded their subordination,
bravery, and powers of endurance.
Washington solicited the military
services of negroes in the revolution, and
rewarded them. Jackson did the
same in the war of 1812. Under both those
great captains, the negro troops fought so
well that they 'received unstinted praise."—Charles
Sumner
[Pg. 109]
crats to do this? It
was a free fight, and the field was open to
the war Democrats to put down this rebellion
by fighting against both master' and slave,
long before the present policy was
inaugurated. There have been men base
enough to propose to me to return to slavery
the black warriors of Port Hudson and
Olustee, and thus win the respect of the
masters they fought. Should I do so, I
should deserve to be dammed in time and
eternity. Come what will, I will keep
my faith with friend and foe. My
enemies pretend I am now currying on this
war for the sole purpose of abolition.
So long as I am President, it shall be
carried on for the sole purpose of restoring
the Union. But no human power can
subdue this rebellion without the use of the
emancipation policy, and every other policy
calculated to weaken the moral and physical
forces of the rebellion. Freedom has
given us two hundred thousand men raised on
southern soil. It will give us more
yet. Just so much it has subtracted
from the enemy; and instead of alienating
the South, there are now evidences of a
fraternal feeling growing up between our men
and the rank and file of the rebel soldiers.
Let my enemies prove to the country that the
destruction of slavery is not necessary to
the restoration of the Union. I will
abide the issue."
But
the change of policy did not change the
opinion of the Southerners, who,
notwithstanding the use which the
Confederate Government was making of the
negro,still regarded him, in the United
States uniform, as a vicious brute, to be
shot at sight. I prefer, in closing
this chapter, to give the Southern opinion
of the negro, in the words of a
distinguished native of that section.
Mr. George W. Cable, in his "Silent
South," thus gives it:
"He was brought to our shores a naked,
brutish, unclean, captive, pagan savage, to
be and remain a kind of connecting link
between man and the beasts of burden.
The great changes to result from his contact
with a superb race of masters were not taken
into account. As a social factor he
was intended to be as purely zero as the
brute at the other end of his plow line.
The occasional mingling of his blood with
that of the white man worked no change in
the sentiment; one, two, four, eight,
multiplied upon or divided in to zero, still
gave zero for the result. Generafions
of American nativity made no difference; his
children and childrens' children were born
in sight of our door, yet the old notion
held fast. He increased to vast
numbers, but it never wavered. He
accepted our dress, language, religion, all
the fundamentals of our civilization, and
became forever expatriated from his own land
; still he remained, to us, an alien.
Our sentiment went blind. It did not
see that gradually, here by force and there
by choice, he was fulfilling a host of
conditions that earned at least a solemn
moral right to that naturalization which
soonest first had dreamed of giving him.
Frequently be even bought
[Pg. 110]
back the freedom of which he
had been robbed, became a tax-payer, and at
times an educator of his children at his own
expense; but the old idea
of alienism passed laws to banish him, his
wife, and children by thousands from the
State, and threw him into loathsome jails as
a common felon for returning to his native
land. It will be wise to remember that
these were the acts of un enlightened, God
fearing people."
SCENE IN AND NEAR A RECRUITING OFFICE
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