"No reinforcements to be had from the North; vast fatigue duties in throwing up earthworks imposed on our insufficient garrison; the enemy continually increasing both in insolence and numbers; our only success the capture of Fort Pulaski, sealing up of Savannah; and this victory offset, if not fully counter-balanced, by many minor gains of the enemy; this was about the condition of affairs as seen from the headquarters fronting Port Royal bay, when General Hunter one fine morning, with twirling glasses, puckered lips, and dilated nostrils, (he had just received another 'don't-bother-us-for-reinforcements' dispatch from Washington) announced his intention of 'forming a negro regiment, and compelling every able-bodied black man in the department to fight for the freedom which could not but be the issue of our war.'

"This resolution being taken, was immediately acted upon with vigor, the General causing all the necessary orders to be issued, and taking upon himself, as his private burden, the responsibility for all the irregular issues of arms, clothing, equipments, and rations involved in collecting and organizing the first experimental negro regiment. The men he intended to pay, at first, by placing them as laborers on the pay-roll of the Chief Quartermaster; but it was his hope that the obvious necessity and wisdom of the measure he had thus presumed to adopt without authority, would secure for it the immediate approval of the higher authorities, and the necessary orders to cover the required pay and supply-issue of the force he had in contemplation. If his course should be endorsed by the War Department, well and good; if it were not so indorsed, why, he had enough property of his own to pay back to the Government all he was irregularly expending in this experiment.

"But now, on the very threshold of this novel enterprise, came the first—and it was not a trivial—difficulty. Where could experienced officers be found for such an organization? 'What! command niggers?' was the reply—if possible more amazed than scornful—of nearly every competent young lieutenant or captain of volunteers to whom the suggestion of commanding this class of troops was made. 'Never mind,' said Hunter, when this trouble was brought to his notice; 'the fools or bigots who refuse are enough punished by their refusal. Before two years they will be competing eagerly for the commission they now reject.' Straightly there was issued a circular to all commanding officers in the department, directing them to announce to the non-commissioned officers and men of their respective commands that commissions in the 'South Carolina Regiment of Colored Infantry,' would be given to all deserving and reputable sergeants, corporals; and men who would appear at department headquarters, and prove able to pass an examination in the manual and tactics before a Band of Examiners, which was organized in a general order of current date. Capt. Arthur M. Kenzie, of Chicago, aid-de-camp,—now of Hancock's Veterans Reserve Corps—was detailed as Colonel of the regiment, giving place, subsequently, in consequence of injured health, to the present Brig.-Gen. James D. Fessenden, then a captain in the Berdan Sharpshooters, though detailed as acting aid-de-camp on Gen. Hunter's staff. Capt. Kenzie, we may add, was Gen. Hunter's nephew, and his appointment as Colonel was made partly to prove—so violent was then the prejudice against negro troops—that the Commanding General asks nothing of them which he was not willing that one of his own flesh and blood should be engaged in.

"The work was now fairly in progress, but the barriers of prejudice were not to be lightly overthrown. Non-commissioned officers and men of the right stamp, and able to pass the examination requisite, were scarce articles. Ten had the hardihood or moral courage to face the screaming, riotous ridicule of their late associates in the white regiments. We remember one very striking instance in point, which we shall give as a sample of the whole.

"Our friend Mr. Charles F. Briggs, of this city, so well known in literary circles, had a nephew enlisted in that excellent regiment the 48th New York, then garrisoning Fort Pulaski and the works of Tybee Island. This youngster had raised himself by gallantry and good conduct to be a non-commissioned officer; and Mr. Briggs was anxious that he should be commissioned, according to his capacities, in the colored troops then being raised. The lad was sent for, passed his examination with credit, and was immediately offered a first lieutenancy, with the promise of being made captain when his company should be filled up to the required standard,—probably within ten days.

"The inchoate first-lieutenant was in ecstasies; a gentleman by birth and education, he longed for the shoulder-straps. He appeared joyously grateful; and only wanted leave to run up to Fort Pulaski for the purpose of collecting his traps, taking leave of his former comrades, and procuring his discharge-papers from Col. Barton. Two days after that came a note to the department headquarters respectfully declining the commission! He had been laughed and jeered out of accepting a captaincy by his comrades; and this—though we remember it more accurately from our correspondence with Mr. Briggs—was but one of many scores of precisely similar cases.

"At length, however, officers were found; the ranks were filled; the men learned with uncommon quickness, having the imitativeness of so many monkeys apparently, and such excellent ears for music that all evolutions seemed to come to them by nature. At once, despite all hostile influence, the negro regiment became one of the lions of the South; and strangers visiting the department, crowded out eagerly to see its evening parades and Sunday-morning inspection. By a strange coincidence, its camp was pitched on the lawn and around the mansion of Gen. Drayton, who commanded the rebel works guarding Hilton Head, Port Royal and Beaufort, when the same were first captured by the joint naval and military operations under Admiral DuPont and General Timothy W. Sherman,—General Drayton's brother, Captain Drayton of our navy, having command of one of the best vessels in the attacking squadron; as he subsequently took part in the first iron-clad attack on Fort Sumpter.

"Meantime, however, the War Department gave no sign, and the oracles of the Adjutant-General's office were dumb as the statue of the Sphynx. Reports of the organization of the First South Carolina infantry were duly forwarded to army headquarters; but evoked no comment, either of approval or rebuke. Letters detailing what had been done, and the reason for doing it; asking instructions, and to have commissions duly issued to the officers selected; appeals that the department paymaster should be instructed to pay these negro troops like other soldiers; demands that the Government should either shoulder the responsibility of sustaining the organization, or give such orders as would absolve Gen. Hunter from the responsibility of backing out from an experiment which he believed to be essential to the salvation of the country,—all these appeals to Washington proved in vain; for the oracles still remained profoundly silent, probably waiting to see how public opinion and the politicians would receive this daring innovation.



"At length one evening a special dispatch steamer plowed her way over the bar, and a perspiring messenger delivered into Gen. Hunter's hands a special despatch from the War Department, 'requiring immediate answer.' The General was just about mounting his horse for his evening ride along the picket-line, when this portentous missive was brought under his notice. Hastily opening it, he first looked grave, then began to smile, and finally burst into peals of irrepressible laughter, such as were rarely heard from 'Black David,' his old army name. Never was the General seen, before or since, in such good spirits; he literally was unable to speak from constant interruption of laughter; and all his Adjutant-General could gather from him was: 'That he would not part with the document in his hand for fifty thousand dollars.'

"At length he passed over the dispatch to his Chief of Staff, who on reading it, and re-reading it, could find in its texts but little apparent cause for merriment. It was a grave demand from the War Department for information in regard to our negro regiment—the demand being based on a certain resolution introduced by the Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, asking for specific information on the point, in a tone clearly not friendly. These resolutions had been adopted by Congress; and as Hunter was without authority for any of his actions in this case, it seemed to his then not cheerful Adjutant-General that the documents in his hands were the reverse of hilarious.

"Still Hunter was in extravagant spirits as he rode along, his laughter startling the squirrels in the dense pine woods, and every attempt that he made to explain himself being again and again interrupted by renewed peals of inextinguishable mirth. 'The fools!' he at length managed to say; 'that old fool has just given me the very chance I was growing sick for! The War Department has refused to notice my black regiment; but now, in reply to this resolution, I can lay the matter before the country, and force the authorities either to adopt my negroes or to disband them.' He then rapidly sketched out the kind of reply he wished to have prepared; and, with the first ten words of his explanation, the full force of the cause he had for laughter became apparent. Never did a General and his Chief-of-Staff, in a more unseemly state of cachinnation, ride along a picket-line. At every new phase of the subject it presented new features of the ludicrous; and though the reply at this late date may have lost much of the drollery which then it wore, it is a serio-comic document of as much vital importance in the moral history of our late contest as any that can be found in the archives under the care of Gen. E. D. Townsend. It was received late Sunday evening, and was answered very late that night, in order to be in time for the steamer Arago, which sailed at daylight next morning,—the dispatch-steamer which brought the request 'for immediate information' having sustained some injuries which prevented an immediate return. It was written after midnight, we may add, in a tornado of thunder and tempest such as has rarely been known even on that tornado-stricken coast; but loud as were the peals and vivid the flashes of heaven's artillery, there were at least two persons within the lines on Hilton Head who were laughing far too noisily themselves to pay any heed to external clamors. The reply thus concocted and sent, from an uncorrected manuscript copy now in our possession, ran as follows:

"HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, Hilton Head, S. C., June, 1862.

"To the HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.

"SIR:—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a communication from the Adjutant-General of the Army, dated June 13, 1862, requesting me to furnish you with the information necessary to answer certain Resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives June 9, 1862, on motion of the Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky; their substance being to enquire:

"1st—Whether I had organized, or was organizing, a regiment of 'fugitive slaves' in this department.

"2d—Whether any authority had been given to me from the War Department for such an organization; and

"3rd—Whether I had been furnished, by order of the War Department, with clothing, uniforms, arms, equipments, and so forth, for such a force?

"Only having received the letter at a late hour this evening, I urge forward my answer in time for the steamer sailing to-morrow morning,—this haste preventing me from entering, as minutely as I could wish, upon many points of detail, such as the paramount importance of the subject would seem to call for. But, in view of the near termination of the present session of Congress, and the wide-spread interest which must have been awakened by Mr. Wickliffe's resolutions, I prefer sending even this imperfect answer to waiting the period necessary for the collection of fuller and more comprehensive data.

"To the first question, therefore, I reply: That no regiment of 'fugitive slaves' has been, or is being, organized in this department. There is, however, a fine regiment of loyal persons whose late masters are fugitive rebels—men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the national flag, leaving their loyal and unhappy servants behind them, to shift, as best they can, for themselves. So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing the regiment from seeking to evade the presence of their late owners, that they are now, one and all, endeavoring with commendable zeal to acquire the drill and discipline requisite to place them in a position to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous proprietors.

"To the second question, I have the honor to answer that the instructions given to Brig.-Gen. T. W. Sherman by the Hon. Simon Cameron, late Secretary of War, and turned over to me, by succession, for my guidance, do distinctly authorize me to employ 'all loyal persons offering their service in defence of the Union, and for the suppression of this rebellion,' in any manner I may see fit, or that circumstances may call for. There is no restriction as to the character or color of the persons to be employed, or the nature of the employment—whether civil or military—in which their services may be used. I conclude, therefore, that I have been authorized to enlist 'fugitive slaves' as soldiers, could any such fugitives be found in this department. No such characters, however, have yet appeared within view of our most advanced pickets,—the loyal negroes everywhere remaining on their plantations to welcome us, aid us, and supply us with food, labor and information. It is the masters who have in every instance been the 'fugitives,' running away from loyal slaves as well as loyal soldiers; and these, as yet, we have only partially been able to see—chiefly their heads over ramparts, or dodging behind trees, rifles in hand, in the extreme distance. In the absence of any 'fugitive master law,' the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy had not the crime of treason given them right to pursue, capture and bring those persons of whose benignant protection they have been thus suddenly and cruelly bereft.

"To the third interrogatory, it is my painful duty to reply that I have never received any specific authority for issue of clothing, uniforms, arms, equipments and so forth, to the troops in question,—my general instructions from Mr. Cameron, to employ them in any manner I might find necessary, and the military exigencies of the department and the country, being my only, but I trust, sufficient justification. Neither have I had any specific authority for supplying these persons with shovels, spades, and pickaxes, when employing them as laborers; nor with boats and oars, when using them as lighter-men; but these are not points included in Mr. Wickliffe's resolution. To me it seemed that liberty to employ men in any particular capacity implied and carried with it liberty, also, to supply them with the necessary tools; and, acting upon this faith, I have clothed, equiped, and armed the only loyal regiment yet raised in South Carolina, Georgia or Florida.

"I must say, in vindication of my own conduct, that, had it not been for the many other diversified and imperative claims on my time and attention, a much more satisfactory result might to have been achieved; and that, in place of only one regiment, as at present, at least five or six well-drilled, and thoroughly acclimated regiments should, by this time, have been added to the loyal forces of the Union.

"The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and even marvellous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic; displaying great natural capacities in acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers who have had charge of them that, in the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British authorities in the West India Islands.

"In conclusion, I would say, it is my hope—there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, owing to the exigencies of the campaign in the Peninsula—to have organized by the end of next fall, and be able to present to the government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and devoted soldiers.

"Trusting that this letter may be made part of your answer to Mr. Wickliffe's resolutions, I have the honor to be,

Very respectfully your most obedient servant, DAVID HUNTER, Maj.-Gen. Commanding."

"This missive was duly sent, with many misgivings that it would not get through the routine of the War Department in time to be laid before Congress previous to the adjournment of that honorable body which was then imminent. There were fears; too, that the Secretary of War might think it not sufficiently respectful, or serious in its tone; but such apprehensions proved unfounded. The moment it was received and read in the War Department, it was hurried down to the House, and delivered, ore retundo, from the clerk's desk.

"Here its effects were magical. The clerk could scarcely read it with decorum; nor could half his words be heard amidst the universal peals of laughter in which both Democrats and Republicans appeared to vie as to which should be the more noisy. Mr. Wickliffe, who only entered during the reading of the latter half of the document, rose to his feet in a frenzy of indignation, complaining that the reply, of which he had only heard some portion, was an insult to the dignity of the House, and should be severely noticed. The more he raved and gesticulated, the more irrepressibly did his colleagues, on both sides of the slavery question, scream and laugh; until finally, the merriment reached its climax on a motion made by some member—Schuyler Colfax, if we remember rightly—that 'as the document appeared to please the honorable gentleman from Kentucky so much, and as he had not heard the whole of it the Clerk be now requested to read the whole again'—a motion which was instantaneously carried amid such an uproar of universal merriment and applause as the frescoed walls of the chamber have seldom heard, either before or since. It was the great joke of the day, and coming at a moment of universal gloom in the public mind, was seized upon by the whole loyal press of the country as a kind of politico-military champaign cocktail.

"This set that question at rest forever; and not long after, the proper authorities saw fit to authorize the employment of 'fifty thousand able-bodied blacks for labor in the Quartermaster's Department,' and the arming and drilling as soldiers of five thousand of these, but for the sole purpose of 'protecting the women and children of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from home in the public service.'

"Here we have another instance of the reluctance with which the National Government took up this idea of employing negroes as soldiers; a resolution, we may add, to which they were only finally compelled by General Hunter's disbandment of his original regiment, and the storm of public indignation which followed that act.

"Nothing could have been happier in its effect upon the public mind than Gen. Hunter's reply to Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, given in our last. It produced a general broad grin throughout the country, and the advocate who can set his jury laughing rarely loses his cause. It also strengthened the spinal column of the Government in a very marked degree; although not yet up to the point of fully endorsing and accepting this daring experiment.

"Meantime the civil authorities of course got wind of what was going on,—Mr. Henry J. Windsor, special correspondent of the New York Times, in the Department of the south, having devoted several very graphic and widely-copied letters to a picture of that new thing under the sun, 'Hunter's negro regiment.'

"Of course the chivalry of the rebellion were incensed beyond measure at this last Yankee outrage upon Southern rights. Their papers teemed with vindictive articles against the commanding general who had dared to initiate such a novelty. The Savannah Republican, in particular, denouncing Hunter as 'the cool-blooded abolition miscreant who, from his headquarters at Hilton Head, is engaged in executing the bloody and savage behest of the imperial gorilla who, from his throne of human bones at Washington, rules, reigns and riots over the destinies of the brutish and degraded North.'

"Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means gave content to the outraged feeling of the chivalry. They therefore sent a formal demand to our Government for information as to whether Gen. Hunter, in organizing his regiment of emancipated slaves, had acted under the authority of our War Department, or whether the villany was of his own conception. If he had acted under orders, why then terrible measures of fierce retaliation against the whole Yankee nation were to be adopted; but if, per contra, the iniquity were of his own motion and without the sanction of our Government, then the foreshadowed retribution should be made to fall only on Hunter and his officers.



"To this demand, with its alternative of threats, President Lincoln was in no mood to make any definitive reply. In fact no reply at all was sent, for, as yet, the most far-seeing political augurs could not determine whether the bird seen in the sky of the Southern Department would prove an eagle or a buzzard. Public opinion was not formed upon the subject, though rapidly forming. There were millions who agreed with Hunter in believing that 'that the black man should be made to fight for the freedom which could not but be the issue of our war;' and then they were outraged at the prospect of allowing black men to be killed or maimed in company with our nobler whites.

"Failing to obtain any reply therefor, from the authorities at Washington, the Richmond people determined to pour out all their vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of this last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith there was issued from the rebel War Department a General Order number 60, we believe, of the series of 1862—reciting that 'as the government of the U. S. had refused to answer whether it authorized the raising of a black regiment by Gen. Hunter or not' said General, his staff, and all officers under his command who had directly or indirectly participated in the unclean thing, should hereafter be outlaws not covered by the laws of war; but to be executed as felons for the crimes of 'inciting negro insurrections wherever caught.'

"This order reached the ears of the parties mainly interested just as Gen. Hunter was called to Washington, ostensibly for consultation on public business; but really on the motion of certain prominent speculators in marine transportation, with those 'big things,' in Port Royal harbor,—and they were enormous—with which the General had seen fit to interfere. These frauds, however, will form a very fruitful and pregnant theme for some future chapters. At present our business is with the slow but certain growth in the public mind of this idea of allowing some black men to be killed in the late war, and not continuing to arrogate death and mutilation by projectiles and bayonets as an exclusive privilege for our own beloved white race.

"No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this special duty at Washington, than he was ordered back to the South, our Government still taking no notice of the order of outlawry against him issued by the rebel Secretary of War. He and his officers were thus sent back to engage, with extremely insufficient forces, in an enterprise of no common difficulty, and with an agreeable sentence of sus. per col., if captured, hanging over their devoted heads!

"Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General, that he should either demand the special revocation of that order, or announce to the rebel War Department that our Government has adopted your negro-regiment policy as its own—which would be the same thing.

"It was partly on this hint that Hunter wrote the following letter to Jefferson Davis,—a letter subsequently suppressed and never sent, owing to influences which the writer of this article does not feel himself as yet at liberty to reveal,—further than to say that Mr. Stanton knew nothing of the matter. Davis and Hunter, we may add, had been very old and intimate friends, until divided, some years previous to our late war, by differences on the slavery question. Davis had for many years been adjutant of the 1st U. S. Dragoons, of which Hunter had been Captain Commanding; and a relationship of very close friendship had existed between their respective families. It was this thorough knowledge of his man, perhaps, which gave peculiar bitterness to Hunter's pen; and the letter is otherwise remarkable as a prophecy, or preordainment of that precise policy which Pres't. Johnson has so frequently announced, and reiterated since Mr. Lincoln's death. It ran—with some few omissions, no longer pertinent or of public interest—as follows:

"TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, TITULAR PRESIDENT OF THE SO-CALLED CONFEDERATE STATES.

"SIR:—While recently in command of the Department of the South, in accordance with the laws of the war and the dictates of common sense, I organized and caused to be drilled, armed and equipped, a regiment of enfranchised bondsmen, known as the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.

"For this action, as I have ascertained, the pretended government of which you are the chief officer, has issued against me and all of my officers who were engaged in organizing the regiment in question, a General Order of Outlawry, which announces that, if captured, we shall not even be allowed the usual miserable treatment extended to such captives as fall into your hands; but that we are to be regarded as felons, and to receive the death by hanging due to such, irrespective of the laws of war.

"Mr. Davis, we have been acquainted intimately in the past. We have campaigned together, and our social relations have been such as to make each understand the other thoroughly. That you mean, if it be ever in your power, to execute the full rigor of your threats, I am well assured; and you will believe my assertion, that I thank you for having raised in connection with me and my acts, this sharp and decisive issue. I shall proudly accept, if such be the chance of war, the martyrdom you menace; and hereby give you notice that unless your General Order against me and my officers be formally revoked, within thirty days from the date of the transmission of this letter, sent under a flag of truce, I shall take your action in the matter as finale; and will reciprocate it by hanging every rebel officer who now is, or may hereafter be taken, prisoner by the troops of the command to which I am about returning.

"Believe me that I rejoice at the aspect now being given to the war by the course you have adopted. In my judgment, if the undoubted felony of treason had been treated from the outset as it deserves to be—as the sum of all felonies and crimes—this rebellion would never have attained its present menacing proportions. The war you and your fellow conspirators have been waging against the United States must be regarded either as a war of justifiable defence, carried on for the integrity of the boundaries of a sovereign Confederation of States against foreign aggression, or as the most wicked, enormous, and deliberately planned conspiracy against human liberty and for the triumph of treason and slavery, of which the records of the world's history contain any note.

"If our Government should adopt the first view of the case, you and your fellow rebels may justly claim to be considered a most unjustly treated body of disinterested patriots,—although, perhaps, a little mistaken in your connivance with the thefts by which your agent, John B. Floyd, succeeded in arming the South and partially disarming the North as a preparative to the commencement of the struggle.

"But if on the other hand—as is the theory of our Government—the war you have levied against the U. S. be a rebellion the most causeless, crafty and bloody ever known,—a conspiracy having the rule-or-ruin policy for its basis; the plunder of the black race and the reopening of the African slave trade for its object, the continued and further degradation of ninety per cent. of the white population of the South in favor of a slave driving ten per cent. aristocracy, and the exclusion of all foreign-born immigrants from participation in the generous and equal hospitality foreshadowed to them in the Declaration of Independence,—if this, as I believe, be a fair statement of the origin and motives of the rebellion of which you are the titular head, then it would have been better had our Government adhered to the constitutional view of treason from the start, and hung every man taken in arms against the U. S. from the first butchery in the streets of Baltimore, down to the last resultless battle fought in the vicinity of Sharpsburg. If treason, in other words, be any crime, it is the essence of all crimes; a vast machinery of guilt, multiplying assassinations into wholesale slaughter, and organizing plunder as the basis for supporting a system of National Brigandage. Your action, and that of those with whom you are in league, has its best comment in the sympathy extended to your cause by the despots and aristocracies of Europe. You have succeeded in throwing back civilization for many years; and have made of the country that was the freest, happiest, proudest, richest, and most progressive but two short years ago, a vast temple of mourning, doubt, anxiety and privation; our manufactories of all but war material nearly paralyzed; the inventive spirit which was forever developing new resources destroyed, and our flag, that carried respect everywhere, now mocked by enemies who think its glory tarnished, and that its power is soon to become a mere tradition of the past.

"For all these results, Mr. Davis, and for the three hundred thousand lives already sacrificed on both sides in the war—some pouring out their blood on the battle-field, and others fever stricken and wasting away to death in overcrowded hospitals—you and the fellow miscreants who have been your associates in this conspiracy are responsible. Of you and them it may, with truth be said, that if all the innocent blood which you have spilled could be collected in one pool, the whole government of your Confederacy might swim in it.

"I am aware that this is not the language in which the prevailing etiquette of our army is in the habit of considering your conspiracy. It has come to pass—through what instrumentalities you are best able to decide—that the greatest and worst crime ever attempted against the human family, has been treated in certain quarters as though it were a mere error of judgment on the part of some gifted friend; a thing to be regretted, of course, as causing more or less disturbance to the relation of amity and esteem heretofore existing between those charged with the repression of such eccentricities and the eccentric actors; in fact, as a slight political miscalculation or peccadillo, rather than as an outrage involving the desolation of a continent, and demanding the promptest and severest retribution within power of human law.

"For myself, I have never been able to take this view of the matter. During a lifetime of active service, I have seen the seeds of this conspiracy planted in the rank soil of slavery, and the upas-growth watered by just such tricklings of a courtesy alike false to justice, expediency, and our eternal future. Had we at an earlier day commenced to call things by their right names, and to look at the hideous features of slavery with our ordinary eyesight and common sense, instead of through the rose-colored glasses of supposed political expediency, there would be three hundred thousand more men alive to-day on American soil; and our country would never for a moment have forfeited her proud position as the highest exampler of the blessings—morals, intellectual and material—to be derived from a free form of government.

"Whether your intention of hanging me and those of my staff and other officers who were engaged in organizing the 1st S. C. Volunteers, in case we are taken prisoners in battle, will be likely to benefit your cause or not, is a matter mainly for your own consideration. For us, our profession makes the sacrifice of life a contingency ever present and always to be accepted; and although such a form of death as your order proposes, is not that to the contemplating of which soldiers have trained themselves, I feel well assured, both for myself and those included in my sentence, that we could die in no manner more damaging to your abominable rebellion and the abominable institution which is its origin.

"The South has already tried one hanging experiment, but not with a success—one would think—to encourage its repetition. John Brown, who was well known to me in Kansas, and who will be known in appreciative history through centuries which will only recall your name to load it with curses, once entered Virginia with seventeen men and an idea. The terror caused by the presence of his idea, and the dauntless courage which prompted the assertion of his faith, against all odds, I need not now recall. The history is too familiar and too painful. 'Old Ossawatomie' was caught and hung; his seventeen men were killed, captured or dispersed, and several of them shared his fate. Portions of his skin were tanned, I am told, and circulated as relics dear to the barbarity of the slave-holding heart. But more than a million of armed white men, Mr. Davis, are to-day marching South, in practical acknowledgement that they regard the hanging of three years ago as the murder of a martyr; and as they march to a battle which has the emancipation of all slaves as one of its most glorious results, his name is on their lips; to the music of his memory their marching feet keep time; and as they sling knapsacks each one becomes aware that he is an armed apostle of the faith preached by him,

"'Who has gone to be a soldier In the army of the Lord!'

"I am content, if such be the will of Providence to ascend the scaffold made sacred by the blood of this martyr; and I rejoice at every prospect of making our struggle more earnest and inexorable on both sides; for the sharper the conflict the sooner ended; the more vigorous and remorseless the strife, the less blood must be shed in it eventually.

"In conclusion, let me assure you, that I rejoice with my whole heart that your order in my case, and that of my officers, if unrevoked, will untie our hands for the future; and that we shall be able to treat rebellion as it deserves, and give to the felony of treason a felon's death.

"Very obediently yours, DAVID HUNTER, Maj.-Gen."

"Not long after General Hunter's return to the Department of the South, the first step towards organizing and recognizing negro troops was taken by our Government, in a letter of instructions directing Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton—then Military Governor of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, within the limits of Gen. Hunter's command—to forthwith raise and organize fifty thousand able-bodied blacks, for service as laborers in the quartermaster's department; of whom five thousand—only five thousand, mark you—might be armed and drilled as soldiers for the purpose of 'protecting the women and children of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from home in the public service.'

"Here was authority given to Gen. Saxton, over Hunter's head, to pursue some steps farther the experiment which Hunter—soon followed by General Phelps, also included in the rebel order of 'outlawry'—had been the first to initiate. The rebel order still remained in full force, and with no protest against it on the part of our Government; nor to our knowledge, was any demand from Washington ever made for its revocation during the existence of the Confederacy. If Hunter, therefore, or any of his officers, had been captured in any of the campaigns of the past two and a half years, they had the pleasant knowledge for their comfort that any rebel officers into whose hands they might fall, was strictly enjoined to—not 'shoot them on the spot,' as was the order of General Dix, but to hang them on the first tree; and hang them quickly.



"With the subsequent history of our black troops the public is already familiar. General Lorenzo Thomas, titular Adjutant-General of our army, not being regarded as a very efficient officer for that place, was permanently detailed on various services; now exchanging prisoners, now discussing points of military law, now organizing black brigades down the Mississippi and elsewhere. In fact, the main object seemed to be to keep this Gen. Thomas—who must not be confounded with Gen. George H. Thomas, one of the true heroes of our army,—away from the Adjutant-General's office at Washington, in order that Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend—only a Colonel until quite recently—might perform all the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant-General of our army, while only signing himself and ranking as First Assistant Adjutant-General. If there be an officer who has done noble service in the late war while receiving no public credit for the same,—no newspaper puffs nor public ovation,—that man is Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend, who should long since have been made a major-general, to rank from the first day of the rebellion.

"And now let us only add, as practical proof that the rebels, even in their most rabid state, were not insensible to the force of proper "reasons," the following anecdote: Some officers of one of the black regiments—Colonel Higginson's, we believe—indiscreetly rode beyond our lines around St. Augustine in pursuit of game, but whether feathered or female this deponent sayeth not. Their guide proved to be a spy, who had given notice of the intended expedition to the enemy, and the whole party were soon surprised and captured. The next we heard of them, they were confined in the condemned cells of one of the Florida State prisons, and were to be "tried"—i. e., sentenced and executed—as 'having been engaged in inciting negro insurrection.'

"We had some wealthy young slave-holders belonging to the first families of South Carolina in the custody of Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Hall—now Brigadier-General of this city, who was our Provost Marshal; and it was on this basis Gen. Hunter resolved to operate. 'Release my officers of black troops from your condemned cells at once, and notify me of the fact. Until so notified, your first family prisoners in my hands'—the names then given—'will receive precisely similar treatment. For each of my officers hung, I will hang three of my prisoners who are slave-holders.' This dose operated with instantaneous effect, and the next letter received from our captured officers set forth that they were at large on parole, and treated as well as they could wish to be in that miserable country.

"We cannot better conclude this sketch, perhaps, than by giving the brief but pregnant verses in which our ex-orderly, Private Miles O'Reilly, late of the Old Tenth Army Corps, gave his opinion on this subject. They were first published in connection with the banquet given in New York by Gen. T. F. Meagher and the officers of the Irish Brigade, to the returned veterans of that organization on the 13th of Jan. 1864, at Irving Hall. Of this song it may, perhaps, be said, in verity and without vanity, that, as Gen. Hunter's letter to Mr. Wickliffe had settled the negro soldiers' controversy in its official and Congressional form, so did the publication and immediate popular adoption of these verses conclude all argument upon this matter in the mind of the general public. Its common sense, with a dash of drollery, at once won over the Irish, who had been the bitterest opponents of the measure, to become its friends; and from that hour to this, the attacks upon the experiment of our negro soldiery have been so few and far between that, indeed, they may be said to have ceased altogether. It ran as follows, and appeared in the Herald the morning after the banquet as a portion of the report of the speeches and festivities:

"SAMBO'S RIGHT TO BE KIL'T.

(Air—The Low-Backed Chair.)

Some say it is a burnin' shame To make the naygurs fight, An' that the thrade o' being kilt Belongs but to the white; But as for me, upon me sowl, So liberal are we here, I'll let Sambo be murthered in place o' meself On every day in the year. On every day in the year, boys, An' every hour in the day, The right to be kil't I'll divide wid him, An' divil a word I'll say.

In battle's wild commotion I shouldn't at all object, If Sambo's body should stop a ball That was comin' for me direct; An' the prod of a Southern bagnet, So liberal are we here, I'll resign and let Sambo take it, On every day in the year. On every day in the year boys, An' wid none o' your nasty pride, All right in a Southern bagnet prod Wid Sambo I'll divide.

The men who object to Sambo Should take his place and fight; An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue Than a liver that's wake an' white; Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades His finger a thrigger can pull, An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight From under its thatch o' wool. So hear me all, boys, darlins! Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff, The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, An' give him the largest half!

"In regard to Hunter's reply to Mr. Wickliffe, we shall only add this anecdote, told us one day by that brilliant gentleman and scholar, the Hon "Sunset" Cox, of Ohio (now of New York): 'I tell you, that letter from Hunter spoiled the prettiest speech I had ever thought of making. I had been delighted with Wickliffe's motion, and thought the reply to it would furnish us first-rate Democrat's thunder for the next election. I made up my mind to sail in against Hunter's answer—no matter what it was—the moment it came; and to be even more humorously successful in its delivery and reception than I was in my speech against War Horse Gurley, of Ohio, which you have just been complimenting. Well, you see, man proposes, but providence orders otherwise. When the Clerk announced the receipt of the answer, and that he was about to read it, I caught the Speaker's eye and was booked for the first speech against your negro experiment. The first sentence, being formal and official, was very well; but at the second the House began to grin, and at the third, not a man on the floor—except Father Wickliffe, of Kentucky, perhaps—who was not convulsed with laughter. Even my own risibles I found to be affected; and before the document was concluded, I motioned the Speaker that he might give the floor to whom he pleased, as my desire to distinguish myself in that particular tilt was over.'"



CHAPTER IV.

OFFICERS OF THE PHALANX.

The character, qualifications and proficiency of the men, who, as officers, commanded the negro troops, may be judged by the process which they had to undergo in order to obtain commissions. Unlike the officers of the white volunteers (with whom loyalty and dash were the essential qualifications) they were required to possess much more than an ordinary knowledge of military tactics. Major-General Hunter, by whose order the first negro regiment with white officers was organized, commencing May, 1862, had an eye single to the make up of the men who should be placed in command of the regiments. As a beginning, Gen. Saxton addressed the following letter to Capt. T. W. Higginson, of the 51st Reg't. Mass. Volunteers, Beaufort, S. C., Nov. 5th, 1862:

"MY DEAR SIR:—I am organizing the First Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, with every prospect of success. Your name has been spoken of in connection with the command of this regiment, by some friends in whose judgment I have confidence. I take great pleasure in offering you the position of Col. in it, and hope that you may be induced to accept. I shall not fill the place until I hear from you, or sufficient time shall have passed for me to receive your reply. Should you accept I enclose a pass for Port Royal, of which I trust you will feel disposed to avail yourself at once. I am, with sincere regard,

Yours truly, R. SAXTON, Brig. Gen., Mil. Gov."

This was an excellent selection, and Captain Higginson's acceptance rather assured a fair trial for the men who should compose this regiment, as well as the quality of its officers.



The first Kansas regiment which recruited in that State, commencing in August, 1862, was also fortunate in having Colonel R. J. Hinton.

General Butler, at New Orleans, was prevented by circumstances surrounding him at the time, from choosing among the friends of the negro race, as was the case in the before mentioned regiments, men to command the first and second regiments organized by him in the above named city, in August, 1862. He was only too glad to find white men of military capacity to take charge of the drilling and disciplining of the troops. As an experiment he was more than lucky in the appointment of Colonels Stafford and Daniels to the command of these regiments, seconded by Lieut. Cols. Bassett and Hall, and Finnegass of the 3rd Regiment. These officers proved themselves worthy of the trust reposed in them, and made these regiments, in drill and discipline, second to none in the Department of the Gulf. Notwithstanding the captains and subordinate officers of the first and second regiments were men, who like those in a large majority of the white regiments had never made arms a profession, and, who, through American prejudice, had but very limited opportunities for acquiring even the rudiments of a common English education. Several of them, however, being mulattoes, had had some training in the schools of the parishes, and some few in the higher schools of France, and in the Islands of the Caribbean Sea. Maj. Dumas, of the 2nd Regiment, whose slaves composed nearly one whole company, was a gentleman of fine tact and ability, as were others.

Considering that they were all negroes, free and slave, their dash and manly courage, no less than their military aptitude, was equal, and in many instances superior, to those found in the regiments of Maine and New York. The 3rd Regiment was officered by soldiers of undoubted character and pluck, as they proved themselves to be, during the siege of Port Hudson, especially Capt. Quinn, who won distinction and promotion, as the record shows. The regiments raised thereafter were officered, more or less, by the non-commissioned officers of the white regiments, as a reward for gallantry and meritorious service upon the field, or on account of proficiency in drill. This rule of selection held good throughout all the departments in the organizing of negro troops. In May, 1863, President Lincoln, with a view of correcting an abuse that a certain commanding general had begun to practice in assigning inferior, though brave, men to the command of negro regiments; and in keeping with his new policy of arming the negroes, for which Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General of the Army, had gone into the Mississippi Valley region to raise twenty regiments, he appointed a Board for the examination of those applying for commands in negro regiments.

The "Record of the 7th Reg't. U.S. Colored Troops," in regard to the matter, says: "That the labors of this Board contributed very materially to the success of the experiment of raising this class of troops, no one cognizant with the facts can doubt. The operations of the Board can best be shown by quoting the following letter received from Gen. Casey in reply to some enquiries on the subject:

"BROOKLYN, Nov. 30th, 1875.

* * * "The Board for the Examination of candidates for officers in colored regiments, of which I was President, was appointed in May, 1863, and continued its duties about two years. This movement was, at first, very unpopular with a portion of the people of the country, as also with a large portion of the army. I, although doubting at first with regard to the expediency of operating in large bodies with this species of force, determined, that so far as I was concerned, it should have a fair trial.

"A system was adopted for the examination of candidates which did not allow influence, favor or affection to interfere with the enforcement of its provisions. The Board examined nearly three thousand candidates, seventeen hundred of whom they recommended for commissions in various grades, from colonel down.

"From my knowledge of the officers of white volunteers, gained in my duties connected with receiving and organizing, in the city of Washington, 300,000 of them, and also as commander of a division on the Peninsula, I have no hesitation in saying that the officers of the colored regiments, who passed the Board, as a body were superior to them, physically, mentally and morally.

"From the concurrent reports received from various sources, there is but little doubt that the success of the colored troops in the field was brought about in no small degree by the action of the Board.

"The following is the copy of a letter which I addressed to a gentleman of Philadelphia, and which you may find of interest:

'In conversation with you a few days since, I promised to elaborate somewhat the ideas which I expressed with regard to the appointment of officers of colored troops.

'Military men, whose opinion is worth having, will agree in this, that to have good and efficient troops it is indispensable that we should have good officers. The material for soldiers which the loyal States have furnished during this rebellion, I have no hesitation in saying, is the best that the world has ever seen. Such men deserve to have officers to command them who have been educated to the military profession. But few men are really fit to command men who have not had such an education. In default of this, as a sufficient number of such men cannot be found in the country, the number has to be made up from the best available material. In order to ascertain whether or not the aspirant possesses the proper knowledge and capacity for command, it is necessary that he be examined by a board of competent officers. The fact that the life and death of the men of the regiment is intimately connected with the competency of its officers, is not sufficiently appreciated by the community.

'The Board for the examination of officers of colored troops over which I preside, considers three things as indispensable before recommending a candidate, viz.: A good moral character, physical capacity, true loyalty to the country. A person possessing these indispensable qualifications is now submitted to an examination as to his knowledge of tactics and capacity for command.

'The following grades are entertained, viz.:

Colonel—1st, 2d and 3d Class. Lieut.-Colonel—1st, 2d and 3d Class. Major— " Captain— " 1st Lieut.— " 2d Lieut.— "

and the recommendations for appointment made according to the applicant's merits.

'We have endeavored, to the best of our ability, to make this recommendation without partiality, favor or affection. We consider alone, in making our awards, the ability of the person to serve his country in the duties appertaining to the office. If, in the opinion of the Board, the person is not possessed of sufficient knowledge or capacity to fill either of the above named to the advantage of his country, he is rejected, notwithstanding any influence he may be able to bring to bear in the case. Let it be remembered that zeal alone is not sufficient; but what we require for a good officer is zeal combined with knowledge. No ordinary man can properly fill the office of colonel of a regiment. To acquire that knowledge of tactics as would fit him to command his regiment, as it ought to be in all situations, requires much study and practice, and is by no means easy. He should, besides, possess good administrative qualities, in order that affairs should run smoothly in his command, and the officers and privates be as contented and happy as circumstances admit. Nor can too much trouble be taken properly to prepare persons to fill the responsible position of officers. Each State should have its military academy. In the meantime much good can be done by instituting a school for the instruction of persons (especially those who have had some experience in the service) who may have the requisite capacity and zeal to serve their country with advantage. Eschew all humbuggery and mere pretension, and let merit be the test of advancement.

'Let it be impressed deeply on the conscience of every man of influence and authority that when he places in command an incompetent officer he is guilty of manslaughter. The country has lost millions of treasure and thousands of lives by the incompetency of officers. We have many enemies on earth besides the Southern rebels. The fate of free institutions, not only in our own country, but in other lands, the destiny of millions unborn, depend upon our ability to maintain this contest to a successful issue against all our enemies, both foreign and domestic.

'The system of examination instituted by this Board, in my opinion, should be extended to the white as well as colored troops.

'Many of those who have been unsuccessful in the examination before the Board have, no doubt, in some cases, felt aggrieved, as also their friends.

'We have established a system of examination for officers, the good effects of which are already apparent in the colored organizations in the field. In the performance of this responsible, and not always agreeable duty, of presiding over this Board, I have always endeavored to be guided by conscientious regard for the good of the country, and I have every confidence that a just and intelligent people will award their approbation.

SILAS CASEY, Bvt. Major-General U.S. Army.'"

Of course this did not apply to regiments raised at the North, generally. They were officered by the elite, such as Col. R. G. Shaw, of the 54th Massachusetts, a former member of the 7th New York Regiment, and upon whose battle monument his name is carved. Cols. James C. Beecher, Wm. Birney and a host of others, whose names can now be found on the army rolls, with the prefix General, commanded these regiments. Of those who commanded Southern regiments this is equally true, especially of those who served in the 9th, 10th, 18th and 19th Corps. Col. Godfred Weitzel, who in March, 1865, had been promoted to Major General of Volunteers, commanded the 25th Corps of 30,000 negro soldiers. The select corps of officers intended to officer Gen. Ullman's brigade of four regiments to be raised at New Orleans by order of the War Department, dated January 1863, as well as the battalion, which he was also ordered to raise for scouting purposes, the following March, included many men of rank. To command a negro regiment or company was at this date a coveted prize, for which men of wealth and education contended. The distinction which they were continually winning for their officers, frequently overcame the long-cherished prejudice of West Point, and the graduates of this caste institution now vied for commissions in negro regiments, in which many of them served during the Rebellion and since.



It was the idea of Gen. Banks when organizing the Corps d'Afrique to appoint even the non-commissioned officers from the ranks of white regiments, and he did so in several instances. His hostility to negro officers was the cause of his removing them from the regiments, which Major General Butler organized at New Orleans in 1862. In organizing the Corps d'Afrique, the order, No. 40, reads:

"The Commanding General desires to detail for temporary or permanent duty, the best officers of the army, for the organization, instruction, and discipline of this Corps. With them he is confident that the Corps will render important service to the Government. It is not established upon any dogma of equality or other theory, but as a practical and sensible matter of business. The Government makes use of mules, horses, uneducated white men in the defence of its institutions; why should not the negro contribute whatever is in his power, for the cause in which he is as deeply interested as other men? We may properly demand from him whatever service he can render."

At first it was proposed to pay the officers of negro troops less than was paid the officers of white soldiers, but this plan was abandoned. Toward the close of the war nearly all the chaplains appointed to negro regiments were negroes; non-commissioned officers were selected from the ranks, where they were found as well qualified as those taken from the ranks of white regiments. In the 10th and 18th Corps it was a common thing for the orderly sergeants to call their company's roll from memory, and the records of many companies and regiments are kept at the War Department in Washington, as mementoes of their efficiency.

Such were the men who commanded the Black Phalanx. The following are the names of the negro commissioned officers of the Butler Louisiana Regiments:

ROSTER OF NEGRO OFFICERS OF THE LOUISIANA NATIVE GUARD VOLUNTEER REGIMENTS.

FIRST REGIMENT.

Capts. Andrew Cailloux, Louis A. Snaer, John Depass, " Henry L. Rey, Edward Carter, Joseph Follin, " James Lewis, James H. Ingraham, Aleide Lewis. Lieuts. Lewis Petit, Ernest Sougpre, J. G. Parker, " J. E. Morre, Wm. Harding, John Hardman, " F. Kimball, V. Lesner, J. D. Paddock, " Louis D. Lucien.

SECOND REGIMENT.

Major F. E. Dumas,[21] Capts. E. A. Bertinnean, Hannibal Carter, E. P. Chase, " W. P. Barrett, S. W. Ringgold, P. B. S. Pinchback, " William Bellez, Monroe Menllim, Joseph Villeverde, " Samuel J. Wilkerson, R. H. Isabella. Lieuts. Octave Rey, J. P. Lewis, Jasper Thompson, " Ernest Murphy, Calvin Glover, J. Wellington, " Louis Degray, George T. Watson, Joseph Jones, " Alphonso Fluery, Rufus Kinsley, Ernest Hubian, " Theo. A. Martin, Soloman Hoys, Alfred Arnis, " Peter O. Depremont.

THIRD REGIMENT.

Capts. Jacques Gla, Peter A. Gardner, Leon G. Forstall, " Joseph C. Oliver, Charles W. Gibbons, Samuel Laurence, " John J. Holland. Lieuts. Paul Paree, Morris W. Morris, Emile Detrege, " Eugene Rapp, E. T. Nash, Alfred Bourgoan, " E. Moss, Chester W. Converse, G. B. Miller, " G. W. Talmon, Octave Foy, Chas. Butler.

NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.

74TH U. S. C. T. CO. I. 2D LA. N. G.

Sergts. Joseph Boudraux, Andrieu Vidal, Joseph Bellevue, " Louis Martin, Jessy C. Wallace, Corpls. Paul Bonne, Thos. William, Joseph Labeaud, " Joseph Toolmer, Louis Ford, Peter Fleming,

As "muster in" rolls show.

74TH U. S. C. T. CO. D. 2ND N. G.

1st Sergts. Joseph Francois, Adolph Augustin, John Frick, " Francois Remy, Louis Duquenez. Corpls. Dorsin Sebatier, Auguste Martin, Lucien Boute, " Adolphe Decoud, Oscar Samuel, Andre Gregoire, " Joseph Armand, Achilles Decoud.

As "muster out" rolls show.



75TH U. S. C. T. CO. F. 3RD N. G.

Sergts. Hy. White, Robert Williams, Mathew Roden, " Frank Nichols,

Corpls. Alfred Kellie, Philip Craff, Julius Vick.

As mustered out.

73RD U. S. C. T. CO. A. 1ST LA. N. G.

Sergts. Joseph R. Forstall, Edmund Tomlinson, Edgar Thezan, " Numa Brihou, Edward P. Ducloslange, Corpls. John G. Seldon, Thelesphore J. Sauvinet, Alonzo Tocca, " Joseph Francois, Antonio Segura, Auguste Martin, " Francois Remy, Ernest Brustic,

73RD U. S. C. T. CO. B. 1ST LA. N. G.

Sergts. Faustin Zenon, Louis Francois, August Bartholenny, " Joseph Alfred, Wm. Armstrong,

Arthur Gaspard was a Sergeant at "muster in" of company; discharged for wounds Dec. 10th, 1863.

Corpls. Alphonse Barbe, Albert Victor, Wm. John Baptist, " Louis Gille.

These were non-commissioned officers of Co. B at "muster out."

73RD U. S. C. T. CO. H. 1ST LA. N. G.

Capt. Henry L. Rey, 1st Lieut. Eugene Rapp, 2nd Lieut. Louis Arthur Thibaut, 1st Sergt. Henry Mathien, 2nd Sergt. Armand Daniel, 3rd Sergt. J. B. Dupre. 4th " Felix Mathien, 5th " Lucien Dupre, Corpls. Ernest Hewlett, Frank Delhomme, D. J. Marine, " Felix Santini, Celestine Ferrand, Auguste Campbell, " Narcis Hubert, Caliste Dupre.

As "muster in."

73RD U. S. C. T. CO. G, 1ST LA. N. G.

Sergts. Theodule Drinier, Peter Pascal, Peter Robin, " Gustave St. Leger, Armand Le Blanc. Corpls. Edward Louis, Cherry Fournette, Townsen Lee, " John Thompson, Perrin Virgile, William Charity, " John Marshall, Soloman Fisher.

The above were the non-commissioned officers at "muster out" of Company.

Corporal W. Heath, killed at Port Hudson.

74TH U. S. C. T. CO. G. 2ND LA. N. G.

Sergts. Thos. Martin, Etienne Duluc, Arthur Frilot, " Louis Martin, J. B. Lavigne, Corpls. Martin Forstals, Emile Duval, Gustave Ducre, " Joseph Naroce, Polin Paree,* Jerome Alugas, " Ernest Butin, Pierre Jignac.

* Deserted Oct. 5th, 1863.

The above were the non-commissioned officers at "muster in" of company, Oct. 1862.

OTHER REGIMENTS.

Surgeons U. S. Army.—Dr. W. P. Powell, Dr. A. T. Augusta. Major, Martin R. Delaney. Capt., O. S. B. Wall. Lieuts. 55th Regt.—James M. Trotter, Chas. L. Mitchell, W. H. Dupree, " J. F. Shorter.

There were a number of negroes commissioned during the war whose record it has not been possible to obtain. Quite a number of mulattoes served in white regiments, some as officers; they were so light in complexion that their true race connection could not be told. This is true of one of the prominent Ohioans of to-day, who served on the staff of a Major General of volunteers. There were several among the Pennsylvania troops, and not a few in the New York and Massachusetts regiments. While lying on a battle-field wounded and exhausted, an officer of the brigade to which the writer belonged, rode up, passed me his canteen, and enquired if I knew him. A negative answer was given. "I am Tom Bunting," he replied. "You know me now, don't you? We used to play together in our boyhood days in Virginia; keep the canteen. I will let your people know about you." So saying he dashed away to his command; he belonged to a Massachusetts regiment. There was quite a large number of mulattoes who enlisted under Butler, at New Orleans, and served in white regiments; this is also true of the confederate army. The writer has an intimate acquaintance now living in Richmond, Va., who served in a New York Regiment, who, while marching along with his regiment through Broad street, after the capture of that city, was recognized by his mother, and by her was pulled from the ranks and embraced. A man who became United States Marshal of one of the Southern States after the war, was Captain in the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards Regiment. Numerous instances of this kind could be cited.



FOOTNOTES:

[21] Capt. F. E. Dumas organized a company of his own slaves, and attached it to this regiment. He was promoted to the rank of Major, and commanded two companies at Pascagoula, Miss., during the fight. He was a free negro, wealthy, brave and loyal.



CHAPTER V.

DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF.

When Admiral Farragut's fleet anchored at New Orleans, and Butler occupied the city, three regiments of confederate negro troops were under arms guarding the United States Mint building, with orders to destroy it before surrendering it to the Yankees. The brigade, however, was in command of a Creole mulatto, who, instead of carrying out the orders given him, and following the troops out of the city on their retreat, counter-marched his command and was cut off from the main body of the army by the Federal forces, to whom they quietly surrendered a few days after.

General Phelps commanded the Federal forces at Carrolton, about seven miles from New Orleans, the principal point in the cordon around the city. Here the slaves congregated in large numbers, seeking freedom and protection from their barbarous overseers and masters. Some of these poor creatures wore irons and chains; some came bleeding from gunshot wounds. General Phelps was an old abolitionist, and had early conceived the idea that the proper thing to do was for the government to arm the negroes. Now came his opportunity to act. Hundreds of able-bodied men were in his camps, ready and willing to fight for their freedom and the preservation of the Union. The secessionists in that neighborhood complained to General Butler about their negroes leaving them and going into camp with the Yankees. So numerous were the complaints, that the General, acting under orders from Washington, and also foreseeing that General Phelps intended allowing the slaves to gather at his post, issued the following order:

"NEW ORLEANS, May 23, 1862.

"GENERAL:—You will cause all unemployed persons, black and white, to be excluded from your lines.

"You will not permit either black or white persons to pass your lines, not officers and soldiers or belonging to the navy of the United States, without a pass from these headquarters, except they are brought in under guard as captured persons, with information, and those to be examined and detained as prisoners of war, if they have been in arms against the United States, or dismissed and sent away at once, as the case may be. This does not apply to boats passing up the river without landing within the lines.

"Provision dealers and marketmen are to be allowed to pass in with provisions and their wares, but not to remain over night.

"Persons having had their permanent residence within your lines before the occupation of our troops, are not to be considered unemployed persons.

"Your officers have reported a large number of servants. Every officer so reported employing servants will have the allowance for servants deducted from his pay-roll.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

B. F. BUTLER.

"Brig.-Gen. PHELPS, Commanding Camp Parapet."

This struck Gen. Phelps as an inhuman order, though he obeyed it and placed the slaves just outside of his camp lines. Here the solders, having drank in the spirit of their commander, cared for the fugitives from slavery. But they continued to come, according to divine appointment, and their increase prompted Gen. Phelps to write this patriotic, pathetic and eloquent appeal, knowing it must reach the President:

"CAMP PARAPET, NEAR CARROLLTON, LA., June 16, 1862.

"Capt. R. S. DAVIS, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General, New Orleans. La.:

"SIR: I enclose herewith, for the information of the major-general commanding the department, a report of Major Peck, officer of the day, concerning a large number of negroes, of both sexes and all ages, who are lying near our pickets, with bag and baggage, as if they had already commenced an exodus. Many of these negroes have been sent away from one of the neighboring sugar plantations by their owner, a Mr. Babilliard La Blanche, who tells them, I am informed, that 'the Yankees are king here now, and that they must go to their king for food and shelter.'

"They are of that four millions of our colored subjects who have no king or chief, nor in fact any government that can secure to them the simplest natural rights. They can not even be entered into treaty stipulations with and deported to the east, as our Indian tribes have been to the west. They have no right to the mediation of a justice of the peace or jury between them and chains and lashes. They have no right to wages for their labor; no right to the Sabbath; no right to the institution of marriage; no right to letters or to self-defense. A small class of owners, rendered unfeeling, and even unconscious and unreflecting by habit, and a large part of them ignorant and vicious, stand between them and their government, destroying its sovereignty. This government has not the power even to regulate the number of lashes that its subjects may receive. It can not say that they shall receive thirty-nine instead of forty. To a large and growing class of its subjects it can secure neither justice, moderation, nor the advantages of Christian religion; and if it can not protect all its subjects, it can protect none, either black or white.

"It is nearly a hundred years since our people first declared to the nations of the world that all men are born free; and still we have not made our declaration good. Highly revolutionary measures have since then been adopted by the admission of Missouri and the annexation of Texas in favor of slavery by the barest majorities of votes, while the highly conservative vote of two-thirds has at length been attained against slavery, and still slavery exists—even, moreover, although two-thirds of the blood in the veins of our slaves is fast becoming from our own race. If we wait for a larger vote, or until our slaves' blood becomes more consanguined still with our own, the danger of a violent revolution, over which we can have no control, must become more imminent every day. By a course of undecided action, determined by no policy but the vague will of a war-distracted people, we run the risk of precipitating that very revolutionary violence which we seem seeking to avoid.

"Let us regard for a moment the elements of such a revolution.



"Many of the slaves here have been sold away from the border States as a punishment, being too refractory to be dealt with there in the face of the civilization of the North. They come here with the knowledge of the Christian religion, with its germs planted and expanding, as it were, in the dark, rich soil of their African nature, with feelings of relationship with the families from which they came, and with a sense of unmerited banishment as culprits, all which tends to bring upon them a greater severity of treatment and a corresponding disinclination 'to receive punishment'. They are far superior beings to their ancestors, who were brought from Africa two generations ago, and who occasionally rebelled against comparatively less severe punishment than is inflicted now. While rising in the scale of Christian beings, their treatment is being rendered more severe than ever. The whip, the chains, the stocks, and imprisonment are no mere fancies here; they are used to any extent to which the imagination of civilized man may reach. Many of them are as intelligent as their masters, and far more moral, for while the slave appeals to the moral law as his vindication, clinging to it as to the very horns of the altar of his safety and his hope, the master seldom hesitates to wrest him from it with violence and contempt. The slave, it is true, bears no resentment; he asks for no punishment for his master; he simply claims justice for himself; and it is this feature of his condition that promises more terror to the retribution when it comes. Even now the whites stand accursed by their oppression of humanity, being subject to a degree of confusion, chaos, and enslavement to error and wrong, which northern society could not credit or comprehend.

"Added to the four millions of the colored race whose disaffection is increasing even more rapidly than their number, there are at least four millions more of the white race whose growing miseries will naturally seek companionship with those of the blacks. This latter portion of southern society has its representatives, who swing from the scaffold with the same desperate coolness, though from a directly different cause, as that which was manifested by John Brown. The traitor Mumford, who swung the other day for trampling on the national flag, had been rendered placid and indifferent in his desperation by a government that either could not or would not secure to its subjects the blessings of liberty which that flag imports. The South cries for justice from the government as well as the North, though in a proud and resentful spirit; and in what manner is that justice to be obtained? Is it to be secured by that wretched resource of a set of profligate politicians, called 'reconstruction?' No, it is to be obtained by the abolition of slavery, and by no other course.

"It is vain to deny that the slave system of labor is giving shape to the government of the society where it exists, and that that government is not republican, either in form or spirit. It was through this system that the leading conspirators have sought to fasten upon the people an aristocracy or a despotism; and it is not sufficient that they should be merely defeated in their object, and the country be rid of their rebellion; for by our constitution we are imperatively obliged to sustain the State against the ambition of unprincipled leaders, and secure to them the republican form of government. We have positive duties to perform, and should hence adopt and pursue a positive, decided policy. We have services to render to certain states which they cannot perform for themselves. We are in an emergency which the framers of the constitution might easily have foreseen, and for which they have amply provided.

"It is clear that the public good requires slavery to be abolished; but in what manner is it to be done? The mere quiet operation of congressional law can not deal with slavery as in its former status before the war, because the spirit of law is right reason, and there is no reason in slavery. A system so unreasonable as slavery can not be regulated by reason. We can hardly expect the several states to adopt laws or measures against their own immediate interests. We have seen that they will rather find arguments for crime than seek measures for abolishing or modifying slavery. But there is one principle which is fully recognized as a necessity in conditions like ours, and that is that the public safety is the supreme law of the State, and that amid the clash of arms the laws of peace are silent. It is then for our president, the commander-in-chief of our armies, to declare the abolition of slavery, leaving it to the wisdom of congress to adopt measures to meet the consequences. This is the usual course pursued by a general or by a military power. That power gives orders affecting complicated interests and millions of property, leaving it to the other functions of government to adjust and regulate the effects produced. Let the president abolish slavery, and it would be an easy matter for congress, through a well-regulated system of apprenticeship, to adopt safe measures for effecting a gradual transition from slavery to freedom.

"The existing system of labor in Louisiana is unsuited to the age; and by the intrusion of the national forces it seems falling to pieces. It is a system of mutual jealousy and suspicion between the master and the man—a system of violence, immorality and vice. The fugitive negro tells us that our presence renders his condition worse with his master than it was before, and that we offer no alleviation in return. The system is impolitic, because it offers but one stimulent to labor and effort, viz.: the lash, when another, viz.: money, might be added with good effect. Fear, and the other low and bad qualities of the slave, are appealed to, but never the good. The relation, therefore, between capital and labor, which ought to be generous and confiding, is darkling, suspicious, unkindly, full of reproachful threats, and without concord or peace. This condition of things renders the interests of society a prey to politicians. Politics cease to be practical or useful.

"The questions that ought to have been discussed in the late extraordinary convention of Louisiana, are: First, What ought the State of Louisiana to do to adopt her ancient system of labor to the present advanced spirit of the age? And Second, How can the State be assisted by the general government in effecting the change? But instead of this, the only question before that body was how to vindicate slavery by flogging the Yankees!

"Compromises hereafter are not to be made with politicians, but with sturdy labor and the right to work. The interests of workingmen resent political trifling. Our political education, shaped almost entirely to the interest of slavery, has been false and vicious in the extreme, and it must be corrected with as much suddenness, almost, as that with which Salem witchcraft came to an end. The only question that remains to decide is how the change shall take place.

"We are not without examples and precedents in the history of the past. The enfranchisement of the people of Europe has been, and is still going on, through the instrumentality of military service; and by this means our slaves might be raised in the scale of civilization and prepared for freedom. Fifty regiments might be raised among them at once, which could be employed in this climate to preserve order, and thus prevent the necessity of retrenching our liberties, as we should do by a large army exclusively of whites. For it is evident that a considerable army of whites would give stringency to our government, while an army, partly of blacks, would naturally operate in favor of freedom and against those influences which at present most endanger our liberties. At the end of five years they could be sent to Africa, and their places filled with new enlistments.

"There is no practical evidence against the effects of immediate abolition, even if there is not in its favor. I have witnessed the sudden abolition of flogging at will in the army, and of legalized flogging in the navy, against the prejudice-warped judgments of both, and, from the beneficial effects there, I have nothing to fear from the immediate abolition of slavery. I fear, rather, the violent consequences from a continuance of the evil. But should such an act devastate the whole State of Louisiana, and render the whole soil here but the mere passage-way of the fruits of the enterprise and industry of the Northwest, it would be better for the country at large than it is now as the seat of disaffection and rebellion.

"When it is remembered that not a word is found in our constitution sanctioning the buying and selling of human beings, a shameless act which renders our country the disgrace of Christendom, and worse, in this respect, even than Africa herself, we should have less dread of seeing the degrading traffic stopped at once and forever. Half wages are already virtually paid for slave labor in the system of tasks which, in an unwilling spirit of compromise, most of the slave states have already been compelled to adopt. At the end of five years of apprenticeship, or of fifteen at farthest, full wages could be paid to the enfranchised negro race, to the double advantage of both master and man. This is just; for we now hold the slaves of Louisiana by the same tenure that the State can alone claim them, viz: by the original right of conquest. We have so far conquered them that a proclamation setting them free, coupled with offers of protection, would devastate every plantation in the State.

"In conclusion, I may state that Mr. La Blanche is, as I am informed, a descendant from one of the oldest families of Louisiana. He is wealthy and a man of standing, and his act in sending away his negroes to our lines, with their clothes and furniture, appears to indicate the convictions of his own mind as to the proper logical consequences and deductions that should follow from the present relative status of the two contending parties. He seems to be convinced that the proper result of the conflict is the manumission of the slave, and he may be safely regarded in this respect as a representative man of the State. I so regard him myself, and thus do I interpret his action, although my camp now contains some of the highest symbols of secessionism, which have been taken by a party of the Seventh Vermont volunteers from his residence.

"Meantime his slaves, old and young, little ones and all, are suffering from exposure and uncertainty as to their future condition. Driven away by their master, with threats of violence if they return, and with no decided welcome or reception from us, what is to be their lot? Considerations of humanity are pressing for an immediate solution of their difficulties; and they are but a small portion of their race who have sought, and are still seeking, our pickets and our military stations, declaring that they can not and will not any longer serve their masters, and that all they want is work and protection from us. In such a state of things, the question occurs as to my own action in the case. I cannot return them to their masters, who not unfrequently come in search of them, for I am, fortunately, prohibited by an article of war from doing that, even if my own nature did not revolt at it. I can not receive them, for I have neither work, shelter, nor the means or plan of transporting them to Hayti, or of making suitable arrangements with their masters until they can be provided for.

"It is evident that some plan, some policy, or some system is necessary on the part of the government, without which the agent can do nothing, and all his efforts are rendered useless and of no effect. This is no new condition in which I find myself; it is my experience during the some twenty-five years of my public life as a military officer of the government. The new article of war recently adopted by congress, rendering it criminal in an officer of the army to return fugitives from injustice, is the first support that I have ever felt from the government in contending against those slave influences which are opposed to its character and to its interests. But the mere refusal to return fugitives does not now meet the case. A public agent in the present emergency must be invested with wider and more positive powers than this, or his services will prove as valueless to the country as they are unsatisfactory to himself.

"Desiring this communication to be laid before the president, and leaving my commission at his disposal, I have the honor to remain, sir,

"Very respectfully, your obedient servant, J. W. PHELPS, Brigadier-General."

On the day on which he received this letter, Gen. Butler forwarded to Washington this dispatch:

"NEW ORLEANS, LA., June 18, 1862.

"Hon. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

"SIR:—Since my last dispatch was written, I have received the accompanying report from General Phelps.

"It is not my duty to enter into a discussion of the questions which it presents.

"I desire, however, to state the information of Mr. La Blanche, given me by his friends and neighbors, and also Jack La Blanche, his slave, who seems to be the leader of this party of negroes. Mr. La Blanche I have not seen. He, however, claims to be loyal, and to have taken no part in the war, but to have lived quietly on his plantation, some twelve miles above New Orleans, on the opposite side of the river. He has a son in the secession army, whose uniform and equipments, &c., are the symbols of secession of which General Phelps speaks. Mr. La Blanche's house was searched by the order of General Phelps, for arms and contraband of war, and his neighbors say that his negroes were told that they were free if they would come to the general's camp.



"That thereupon the negroes, under the lead of Jack, determined to leave, and for that purpose crowded into a small boat which, from overloading, was in danger of swamping.

"La Blanche then told his negroes that if they were determined to go, they would be drowned, and he would hire them a large boat to put them across the river, and that they might have their furniture if they would go and leave his plantation and crop to ruin.

"They decided to go, and La Blanche did all a man could to make that going safe.

"The account of General Phelps is the negro side of the story; that above given is the story of Mr. La Blanche's neighbors, some of whom I know to be loyal men.

"An order against negroes being allowed in camp is the reason they are outside.

"Mr. La Blanche is represented to be a humane man, and did not consent to the 'exodus' of his negroes.

"General Phelps, I believe, intends making this a test case for the policy of the government. I wish it might be so, for the difference of our action upon this subject is a source of trouble. I respect his honest sincerity of opinion, but I am a soldier, bound to carry out the wishes of my government so long as I hold its commission, and I understand that policy to be the one I am pursuing. I do not feel at liberty to pursue any other. If the policy of the government is nearly that I sketched in my report upon the subject and that which I have ordered in this department, then the services of General Phelps are worse than useless here. If the views set forth in his report are to obtain, then he is invaluable, for his whole soul is in it, and he is a good soldier of large experience, and no braver man lives. I beg to leave the whole question with the president, with perhaps the needless assurance that his wishes shall be loyalty followed, were they not in accordance with my own, as I have now no right to have any upon the subject.

"I write in haste, as the steamer 'Mississippi' is awaiting this dispatch.

"Awaiting the earliest possible instructions, I have the honor to be,

"Your most obedient servant,

"B. F. BUTLER, Major General Commanding."

Gen. Phelps waited about six weeks for a reply, but none came. Meanwhile the negroes continued to gather at his camp. He said, in regard to not receiving an answer, "I was left to the inference that silence gives consent, and proceeded therefore to take such decided measures as appeared best calculated, to me, to dispose of the difficulty." Accordingly he made the following requisition upon headquarters:

"CAMP PARAPET, LA., July 30, 1862.

"Captain R. S. DAVIS, A. A. A. General, New Orleans, La.:

"SIR:—I enclose herewith requisitions for arms, accouterments, clothing, camp and garrison equipage, &c., for three regiments of Africans, which I propose to raise for the defense of this point. The location is swampy and unhealthy, and our men are dying at the rate of two or three a day.

"The southern loyalists are willing, as I understand, to furnish their share of the tax for the support of the war; but they should also furnish their quota of men, which they have not thus far done. An opportunity now offers of supplying the deficiency; and it is not safe to neglect opportunities in war. I think that, with the proper facilities, I could raise the three regiments proposed in a short time. Without holding out any inducements, or offering any reward, I have now upward of three hundred Africans organized into five companies, who are all willing and ready to show their devotion to our cause in any way that it may be put to the test. They are willing to submit to anything rather than to slavery.

Society in the South seems to be on the point of dissolution; and the best way of preventing the African from becoming instrumental in a general state of anarchy, is to enlist him in the cause of the Republic. If we reject his services, any petty military chieftain, by offering him freedom, can have them for the purpose of robbery and plunder. It is for the interests of the South, as well of the North, that the African should be permitted to offer his block for the temple of freedom. Sentiments unworthy of the man of the present day—worthy only of another Cain—could alone prevent such an offer from being accepted.

I would recommend that the cadet graduates of the present year should be sent to South Carolina and this point to organize and discipline our African levies, and that the more promising non-commissioned officers and privates of the army be appointed as company officers to command them. Prompt and energetic efforts in this direction would probably accomplish more toward a speedy termination of the war, and an early restoration of peace and unity, than any other course which could be adopted.

"I have the honor to remain, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, J. W. PHELPS, Brigadier-General."

This reply was received:

NEW ORLEANS, July 31, 1862.

"GENERAL:—The general commanding wishes you to employ the contrabands in and about your camp in cutting down all the trees, &c., between your lines and the lake, and in forming abatis, according to the plan agreed upon between you and Lieutenant Weitzel when he visited you some time since. What wood is not needed by you is much needed in this city. For this purpose I have ordered the quartermaster to furnish you with axes, and tents for the contrabands to be quartered in.

"I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"By order of Major-General BUTLER.

"R. S. DAVIS, Capt. and A. A. A. G.

"To Brigadier-General J. W. PHELPS, Camp Parapet."

General Butler's effort to turn the attention of Gen. Phelps to the law of Congress recently passed was of no avail, that officer was determined in his policy of warring on the enemy; but finding General Butler as firm in his policy of leniency, and knowing of his strong pro-slavery sentiments prior to the war,—notwithstanding his "contraband" order at Fortress Monroe,—General Phelps felt as though he would be humiliated if he departed from his own policy and became what he regarded as a slave-driver, therefore he determined to resign. He replied to General Butler as follows:

"CAMP PARAPET, LA., July 31, 1862.

"Captain R. S. DAVIS, A. A. A. General, New Orleans, La.:

"SIR:—The communication from your office of this date, signed, 'By order of Major-General Butler,' directing me to employ the 'contrabands' in and about my camp in cutting down all the trees between my lines and the lake, etc., has just been received.

"In reply, I must state that while I am willing to prepare African regiments for the defense of the government against its assailants, I am not willing to become the mere slave-driver which you propose, having no qualifications in that way. I am, therefore, under the necessity of tendering the resignation of my commission as an officer of the army of the United States, and respectfully request a leave of absence until it is accepted, in accordance with paragraph 29, page 12, of the general regulations.

"While I am writing, at half-past eight o'clock P. M., a colored man is brought in by one of the pickets who has just been wounded in the side by a charge of shot, which he says was fired at him by one of a party of three slave-hunters or guerillas, a mile or more from our line of sentinels. As it is some distance from the camp to the lake, the party of wood-choppers which you have directed will probably need a considerable force to guard them against similar attacks.

"I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"J. W. PHELPS, Brigadier-General."

Phelps was one of Butler's most trusted commanders, and the latter endeavored, but in vain, to have him reconsider his resignation. General Butler wrote him:

NEW ORLEANS, August, 2, 1862.

"GENERAL:—I was somewhat surprised to receive your resignation for the reasons stated.

"When you were put in command at Camp Parapet, I sent Lieutenant Weitzel, my chief engineer, to make a reconnoissance of the lines of Carrollton, and I understand it was agreed between you and the engineer that a removal of the wood between Lake Pontchartrain and the right of your intrenchment was a necessary military precaution. The work could not be done at that time because of the stage of water and the want of men. But now both water and men concur. You have five hundred Africans organized into companies, you write me. This work they are fitted to do. It must either be done by them or my soldiers, now drilled and disciplined. You have said the location is unhealthy for the soldier; it is not to the negro; is it not best that these unemployed Africans should do this labor? My attention is specially called to this matter at the present time, because there are reports of demonstrations to be made on your lines by the rebels, and in my judgment it is a matter of necessary precaution thus to clear the right of your line, so that you can receive the proper aid from the gunboats on the lake, besides preventing the enemy from having cover. To do this the negroes ought to be employed; and in so employing them I see no evidence of 'slave-driving' or employing you as a 'slave-driver.'

"The soldiers of the Army of the Potomac did this very thing last summer in front of Arlington Heights; are the negroes any better than they?

"Because of an order to do this necessary thing to protect your front, threatened by the enemy, you tender your resignation and ask immediate leave of absence. I assure you I did not expect this, either from your courage, your patriotism, or your good sense. To resign in the face of an enemy has not been the highest plaudit to a soldier, especially when the reason assigned is that he is ordered to do that which a recent act of congress has specially authorized a military commander to do, i. e., employ the Africans to do the necessary work about a camp or upon a fortification.

"General, your resignation will not be accepted by me, leave of absence will not be granted, and you will see to it that my orders, thus necessary for the defense of the city, are faithfully and diligently executed, upon the responsibility that a soldier in the field owes to his superior. I will see that all proper requisitions for the food, shelter, and clothing of these negroes so at work are at once filled by the proper departments. You will also send out a proper guard to protect the laborers against the guerilla force, if any, that may be in the neighborhood.