The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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May 9th, General Butler telegraphs from Bermuda Landing: 'Our operations
may be summed up in a few words. With seventeen hundred cavalry we have
advanced up the Peninsula, forced the Chickahominy, and have safely
brought them to our present position. These are colored cavalry, and are
now holding position as our advance toward Richmond.'

May 25th, the War Department announced, in a bulletin, that 'General
Butler, in a despatch dated at headquarters in the field, at seven
o'clock this morning, reports that Major-General Fitzhugh Lee, lately
promoted, made, with cavalry, infantry, and artillery, an attack upon my
post at Wilson's Wharf, north side of James River, below Fort Powhatan,
garrisoned by two regiments, all negro troops, Brigadier-General Wild
commanding, and was handsomely repulsed. Before the attack, Lee sent a
flag, stating that he had force enough to take the place, demanding its
surrender, and in that case the garrison should be turned over to the
authorities at Richmond as prisoners of war(!); but if this proposition
was rejected, he would not be answerable for the consequences when he
took the place. General Wild replied: 'We will try that.' Reinforcements
were at once sent, but the fight was over before their arrival.'

It has been not unfrequently said that negroes were cowards and would
not fight. The best answer that can be made to that charge is the
official order, hereto annexed, of General 'Baldy' Smith. It will be
remembered that Grant had just accomplished the transfer of his army
from the swamps of the Chickahominy to the south side of the James
River, and had immediately thereupon attacked the earthworks in front of
Petersburg. The time was June--a month later than the official
despatches from Butler already quoted:

'_To the Eighteenth Army Corps_:

'The General commanding desires to express to his command his
appreciation of the soldierly qualities which have been displayed
during the campaign of the last seventeen days. Within that time
they have been constantly called upon to undergo all the hardships
of the soldier's life, and be exposed to all of its dangers.

'Marches under a hot sun have ended in severe battles, and, after
the battle, watchful nights in the trenches gallantly taken from
the enemy.

'But the crowning point of the honor they are entitled to has been
won since the morning of the 15th instant, when a series of
earthworks on most commanding positions and of formidable strength
have been carried, with all the guns and materials of war of the
enemy, including prisoners and colors. The works have all been
held, and the trophies remain in our hands.

'This victory is all the more important to us as the troops never
have been regularly organized in camps where time has been given
them to learn the discipline necessary to a well-organized _corps
d'armee_, but they had been hastily concentrated and suddenly
summoned to take part in the trying campaign of our country's
being. Such honor as they have won will remain imperishable.

'_To the colored troops comprising the division of General Hinks,
the General commanding would call the attention of his command_.
With the veterans of the Eighteenth Corps they have stormed the
works of the enemy and carried them, taking guns and prisoners, and
_in the whole affair they have displayed all the qualities of good
soldiers_.

'By command of
'W. F. SMITH, Major-General.

'WM. RUSSELL, JR.,
'Assistant Adjt.-General.

'Official: SOLON A. CARTER,
'Captain and A. A. A.-G.'

It may be added that 'Baldy' Smith has never been known as being
particularly partial to the use of negro troops. He is reported to have
said, after the assault on Petersburg, that the war was virtually ended,
because the negroes had now shown that they could fight, and so it was
only a question of time.

The man is not to be envied who can contemptuously disregard this
record. And while we give unstinted honor to the heroes whose valor has
made the Army of the Potomac immortal in history, and made its campaign
of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania a campaign of glory, let us not
forget that negro troops in that army, and in other armies in the same
campaign, have borne their part faithfully, and deserve well of the
republic. Nor let us forget the damning atrocities at Fort Pillow, where
black men in United States uniform were massacred in cold blood, because
they were willing rather to die freemen with their white comrades of the
United States army, than live slaves to rebel masters:[D] thus
vindicating their claim to freedom, and reflecting upon our country's
flag the especial honor which such determined bravery has ever been
awarded among men--reminding us of the Three Hundred at Thermopylae, and
the Old Guard at Waterloo, disdaining to surrender.

So strange are the events of history! So mysterious is the plan of
Providence, choosing now, as in the days of the apostle Paul, 'base
things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things
which are not, to bring to nought things that are!' What a stinging
example of time's revenges, to be sure, that negroes should have a part
in bringing to nought the rebellion of negro-holders! that they should
be found fighting for the very Government whose power had aided to keep
them in bondage to these negro-holders! In face of such facts, will any
one impiously declare that fate, or blind chance, rules the affairs of
men!

We might well pause at this point to consider the philosophy of
revolutions. It would be an interesting study to investigate the
efficient or radical causes of these singular phenomena of God's
providence--these crises in history, when 'the fountains of the great
deep are broken up,' and the experience of centuries is crowded into the
limits of a single year, and we see the old landmarks all swept away
before the overwhelming tides of a new era. Then it is that precedents
avail us nothing, and we are driven to lay hold of those principles of
justice and right which are alone eternal. For in the storm and wreck of
revolution those principles are our sure beacon lights, shining on, like
the stars, forever. Thus philosophizing, the question would be: Have
revolutions a fixed law? Is there a recurring sequence in the mighty
'logic of events,' that will enable us to define a formula for the
revolutions of systems in society? So science has demonstrated a law for
the revolutions and changes of systems of worlds in infinite space. Or,
are the revolutions of history, like the volcanic disturbances of our
planet earth, in a sort, abnormal? They seem to come, like the _deus ex
machina_ of the Roman poet, to cut the Gordian knots that perplex
statesmen and bewilder nations. The affairs of men get so tangled up
sometimes, that to prevent anarchy and chaos, God sends revolutions,
which sweep away the effete institutions and old, worn-out systems, to
replace them with new and living systems. And thus there is a perpetual
genesis, or new creation, of the world. Let any one read Carlyle's vivid
description of the badness of the eighteenth century, 'bad in that bad
way as never century before was, till the French Revolution came and put
an end to it,' and he will understand something of this question of
revolutions. It suggests the old scholastic dispute of the free agency
of man, and looks as though, granting that freedom, it were, after all,
too great a gift for us. For history seems to teach, as its one grand
lesson, confirming, as always, the revelation in Christ, that men cannot
take care of themselves; and that God leaves them to their own ways long
enough to satisfy them that human agency is inadequate to solve the
question of reform, and then, when the times are ripe, He takes the
reins into His own hand, and starts society anew. It is the patient
process of education by centuries, or by ages--only to be made perfect
in the millennial age. So it is that the world moves. It moves by the
free agency of man, kept in its balance by the guiding hand of God.

I. THE VEXED QUESTION OF THE NEGRO.

Thus it is that the second American revolution is settling for us the
vexed question of the negro. What should be done with him, or for him,
or to him, had been the disturbing element in our political system ever
since the African slave trade expired by limitation of the Constitution
in 1808. The devices of human ingenuity (inspired, as we fervently
believe, by the purest patriotism) to stave off the inevitable final
settlement of this account, innumerable as they were, and only limited
by the predestined decree of Supreme Benevolence (which is Supreme
Justice), were, at last, exhausted. The statesmanship of '50 had been
outgrown. The giants of those days had gone, one by one, to their reward
ere yet the first breaths of the revolution that has opened the decade
of '60. Nought remained to their lesser associates, who still survived,
but to bow reverently before the storm, 'as seeing in it Him who is
invisible.' Such recognition, indeed, is the measure of men's patriotism
to-day. The man who so perverts his mind and reason as to shut out the
evidence of the stars and his own consciousness (the German
metaphysician's proof of Deity), and deny that God is, is simply a fool;
and every reflecting mind is ready to sanction and adopt the Psalmist's
word: 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' Equally a fool
is he who shuts his eyes to the overwhelming facts of the last two
years, refusing to be taught by the Providence behind them. Such and so
vast is the revolution by which God has intervened in our history. Such
is the Providence that still guides and guards the nation ordained by
Him to be. Such is the revolution that has swept away the slave system,
and opened for us a new path, and given us a new power of progress.

Now, these views need not make one a negro-enthusiast. Because the
system of slavery has been swept away, it is not necessary to assert, as
some do, the negro's equality with the white man in those things wherein
he is plainly not his equal. Yet there is an equality that cannot be
denied. The negro is certainly a man, and not a brute animal; although
so demoralized and corrupt had grown to be the tone of society that we
have actually heard the opinion avowed, in all seriousness, that the
negro had no soul. Shylock, in 'The Merchant of Venice,' pleads for
himself and his Jewish brethren, in one of the most pathetic passages of
even Shakspeare's genius, as though the Hebrew race were considered less
than men. And such, indeed, was nearly the case in Shylock's time. On
the other hand, the Moor of Venice disdains to plead as to his
superiors. His conscious equality in presence of the 'grave and reverend
signiors,' gives to his renowned address a consummate dignity, unknown
elsewhere in literature. He felt, indeed, that his victories under the
flag of the republic entitled him not only to equality, but especial
honor. Is it not singular that in this nineteenth century there should
be found men who gladly accord to the Jew, the descendant of Shem, that
of which they refuse even the possibility to the dark descendant of Ham?
Surely the republic of Venice was not so far behind our boasted
civilization. Our civilization still clings to the idea of privilege.
The privilege of caste is only exchanged for the privilege of color.

Nor need we commit ourselves to the doctrine of some, who would appear
to think that the negro is to be the dominant race of the future; if not
in himself, yet in virtue of his supplementing the composite Anglo-Saxon
race, and thus giving to it a completeness it is assumed not to have at
present. Such we understand to be the doctrine of what styles itself
Miscegenation. It would be pertinent, and, perhaps, conclusive, to cite
on this point the Latin maxim, _De gustibus non disputandum_.

There are those who admire a certain new style of music, of which the
melody is chiefly hidden from the appreciation of common folk, and which
has received the title, 'Music of the Future;' looking forward to a time
when, perhaps, men's senses will be preternaturally quickened to
comprehend its discordant harmonies. It is something akin to that vagary
of religious sentiment, which, whatever may be its merits, whatever its
satisfaction for a spiritually illuminated chosen few, is, nevertheless,
beyond the present ken and comprehension and spiritual compass of most
mortals, and may be called the Religion of the Future. The fatal defect
of all these theories is that they serve no purpose of utility.
Considered as creations of ideal beauty, they may charm the fancy and
quicken the imagination, and even exalt the mental habitudes, of a few
devotees. Or, allowing that they are a sort of morning twilight vision,
they _may_, we cannot dogmatically deny, hereafter develop into a
splendid fulness, in the perfect day. All this may be. But they do not
meet the practical needs of our working life, the wants of weary men and
weary women.

So, what we want for the negro is not a metaphysical theory of his
perfect equality with the white man. Nor, on the other hand, are we at
liberty to say that he is, by virtue of any physical conformation and
structure, something inferior to the white man. Neither of these
positions can be sustained. The one plainly contradicts our observation
and experience; the other needs the proof of science that inferiority is
determined by physical structure. We must face the fact of the negro's
present degraded condition; and we must accept the equal fact of his
being a man, with a soul as precious, in the sight of God, as the soul
of his white brother. For the day when the sublime exordium of the
Declaration of Independence could be stigmatized as a 'glittering
generality,' is gone by. The basis of our American system of government,
it is no longer doubted, is the equality of all men before the law, as
the basis of our Christian faith is the equality of all men before God.
Accepting, then, the two undeniable facts above named, the question is,
What shall we do now with the negro?

II. THE NEGRO SLAVE AS A SOLDIER.

Without attempting to discuss this interesting question in all its
various aspects, we may briefly advert to some of the problems in the
discussion which would seem to be fairly solved in the employment of the
negro as a United States soldier.

Thus much is certainly true of the American negro, and herein he is
doubtless superior to the white man; namely, that he is docile, patient,
buoyant of spirit, full of affection, and endowed with a marvellous
apprehension of things spiritual. His _patience_ is shown by his long
bondage, borne without serious murmuring; awaiting the day of
deliverance, confident that the year of jubilee was to come. This point
is lucidly elaborated in a late article, of great interest, in _The
Edinburgh Review_, said to have been written by a negro escaped from
slavery. The negro's _docility_ appears in his aptitude to catch quickly
the tone of his master's mind, and guide himself by it; in the readiness
with which he yields to superior authority--which may or may not be due
to his spirit-crushing bondage, but which certainly has in it little of
the stupidity we should expect to find if such were the case. The
_buoyancy of his spirit_ overflows in the perpetual music of his laugh
and song amid the hard fortunes of his race. The fulness of his
_capacity of affection_ is attested by his remarkable devotion to master
or mistress, surviving strong amid all vicissitudes, and rising above
the iniquitous injustice that holds him in bonds into that exalted
triumph of the apostle's doctrine: 'Be not overcome of evil, but
overcome evil with good.' As for his _readiness to apprehend spiritual
things_, the experience of every person who has lived at the South
furnishes abundant proof. Who that has stood on the banks of a Southern
river, when a negro was baptized, and heard the loud chorus of joy of
his brethren and sisters when the sign of the Church was put upon him,
and seen the sympathy of eye and hand that welcomed him to the blessed
company, has not felt that for this poor, despised race there are riches
laid up in that kingdom 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and
where thieves do not break through nor steal'? Who that has stood in a
Southern forest on some Sunday afternoon, in the early Southern spring,
when the woods are resonant with the songs of birds, and heard a negro
congregation of believers in their meeting-house near by, joining with
all the fervor of their tropical temperament in this glad hymn of
nature, in the immortal verse of Wesley and Whitfield, has not felt that
to the negro the vision of the New Jerusalem is more of a reality than
has yet been granted to his worldly favored white brother and master?
Ah, no one who has witnessed such scenes all the years of his childhood
and youth, can deny that among the disciples of Christ are to be
reckoned especially the negro race; who bear His blessed cross in our
day, amid the jeers of a sceptical world, just as in His own day upon
earth the negro Simon of Cyrene bore to the Mount of Calvary the cross
on which the Saviour died.

What these things prove is just this: the negro's capacity for freedom;
his capacity to know what is the 'perfect law of liberty,' keeping
irresponsible license in check; his absolute freedom from the
bloodthirstiness that seems to horrify so many unthinking persons, who
affect to fear the consequences of putting a musket in a negro's hand.
The incontestable points above enumerated show the groundlessness of
such an alleged fear. It needs only to consider them candidly to be
disabused on that score. No one who has seen and knows the tenderness of
the negro toward the children of his master, and his never-failing
respect toward his mistress, dares say he fears the negro's savageness.
No one who knows the negro's religious sensibility and his unshaken
faith in Christ, dares say he fears. No. Only those fear who know
nothing at all about the negro. They fear whose creed is given them by
men thirsting for the negro's blood, that it may be coined into ungodly
gold.

Thus much will suffice for objections to negro troops, on the ground of
their incapacity. It is seen that the negro is capable to comprehend the
limitations of liberty; that his nature is not essentially savage, or,
if so, has been softened and tempered into a gentle docility under the
benign influences of civilized society; that, above all, his Christian
education has elevated him to a dignity that despises mean revenge. If
further proof is necessary, the regiments of negro slaves recruited in
Louisiana and the Carolinas, acquiring a discipline that has stood them
in good stead at Olustee (day of gloom) and elsewhere on their native
soil, may be cited in evidence of their capacity.

But what about our rights in the matter? For we are considering now the
case of the slaves, not the free negro? The proper and sufficient answer
to that question is, What about the rights of slave-holders? What rights
of theirs are we bound to respect now? They have taken the law into
their own hands, and if they cannot enforce it, is it any part of our
business to aid them? Certainly and undoubtedly not. It is part of the
penalty of treason; part of the price they are paying for their ignoble
thrust at the nation's life; and a very light penalty, and cheap price
it is, that they lose their right to hold slaves. Such rights as they
possessed they held under the Constitution. We have been willing, for
the sake of peace (bearing in mind the apostle's injunction, 'If it be
possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men'), to
protect, under the sacred covenant of the nation, what they called their
rights to property; albeit not willing ourselves to touch the 'accursed
thing.' The history of the country is a witness to our good faith. But
plainly the injunction of the apostle becomes impossible of obedience
when men transform themselves into fiends, and hang up in their railway
cars, as trophies, the ghastly skulls of such of us as have been slain
in defence of the national covenant.[E] By their own acts the
slave-holders have cancelled our obligations as to such permissive
rights under the Constitution. We shall not probably hasten to incur any
more such obligations. They say that slavery is the strength of their
society. Doubtless it is. Then, Samson-like, they have pulled down upon
themselves the pillars of their whole fabric, and they cannot complain
if they and all their rights, immunities, and titles are buried in the
ruins. In other words, they have appealed from the Constitution, or the
law civil, to the sword, or the law military; and they must abide the
result of that appeal. Such is a brief statement of the question of
negro troops, as affecting the slaves of the South and their traitor
masters.

III. THE FREE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER.

There is another phase of the question, less difficult of solution than
the preceding, perhaps, but by no means less important. It is the case
of the free negro, and especially the free negro of the North. Here
again we need not stop to discuss abstract questions of equality, nor
declare our adherence to the philosophy of Miscegenation. We need not
stop to consider the nature, or justice, of the prejudice which prevails
against the negro at the North. It is undeniable that there is such a
prejudice. Accepting the undoubted fact, we see that it shuts nearly
every avenue of honest industry against the man with a black skin,
restricting him to the most menial offices; and that it is fostered in
many ways by the conventions and usages of our society, so as
practically to put him in a worse condition than his bonded brother at
the South--always except as to his God-given right to his liberty and
labor. Experience has shown that even this is not always fully assured
to the negro; and the July riots of New York indicate the uncertain
tenure of his liberty and life, even under the protection of equal laws.
What then? Shall we remand him to the servitude of the South? Shall we
enact for him a sort of Napoleonic law of general safety, to deprive him
of the poor liberty he has--however profitless the boon may seem to us
to be? Certainly not. Every instinct of humanity rises up against so
monstrous a suggestion. Yet something very like it has a place in the
legislation of some States in the American Union.

Then what a Providential solution of the question is offered in the
employment of the negro as a soldier! There cannot surely be any
well-founded objection to it. Such opposition as the plan has
encountered seems to spring from the same unreasoning prejudice that
keeps the black man out of all decent industries in our free North. It
is that very prejudice which this plan will overcome. For the first
thing to be done is to raise the negro from his degradation; and to do
this we must obviously begin with teaching him a proper self-respect.
This will bear its fruit in making him respected by others. No one will
say that it is well to foster a feeling which outlaws any single class
in the community from the respect of all. This would be to glorify the
slave system of the South, and lay a basis for possible revolutions.
Thus the employment of the negro as a soldier, while it must inspire the
bondman of the South with a truer sense of his worth and capacity, and
thus tend to weaken the foundation of the whole rebel fabric, will also
correct the unquestioned evil of a growing class of outlaws in the midst
of our society. And if we clothe the negro in the uniform of a soldier
of the United States, the respect of the nation for its brave defenders
will teach him self-respect; at the same time that it will teach the
nation to put a new value upon its idea of loyalty.

The epitaph commemorative of the Spartan valor that has made Thermopylae
a name forever, serves to show the conclusion of our whole discussion:

'Go, stranger, and at Lacedaemon tell,
That here, obedient to her laws, we fell.'

For the man who is loyal to his flag will not quarrel with the color of
a comrade in arms who has shed blood, red like his own, in defending
that flag from dishonor; just as the man who is loyal to the altar feels
a fellowship for every one, however humble, who bears the name of their
common Master, and is made in the image of their common Father.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Late Southern newspapers speak of the obstinacy of the garrison at
Fort Pillow, and assert that Forrest would have stopped the massacre at
any time after the capture, if our soldiers had manifested any
disposition to yield.

[E] The writer's father saw these skulls hanging in the cars on a
railway in Georgia, after first Bull Run, and saw them handed through
the cars amid the jeers of passengers.

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