CHAP. XX. Report, Provost Marshal General. Stanton, Report, April 2, 1864. MS. If a single argument were needed to point out President Lincoln's great practical wisdom in the management of this difficult question, that argument is found in the mere summing up of its tangible military results. At the beginning of December, 1863, less than a year after the President first proclaimed the policy, he was able to announce in his annual message that about 50,000 late slaves were then actually bearing arms in the ranks of the Union forces. A report made by the Secretary of War on April 2, 1864, shows that the number of negro troops then mustered into the service of the United States as soldiers had increased to 71,976.1 And we learn further, from the report of the Provost Marshal General that at the close of the war there were in the service of the United States, of colored troops, 120 regiments of infantry, 12 regiments of heavy artillery, 10 companies of light artillery, and 7 regiments of cavalry; making a grand aggregate of 123,156 men. This was the largest number in service at any one time, but it does not represent all of them. The entire number commissioned and enlisted in this branch of the service during the war, or, more properly speaking, during the last two years of the war, was 186,017` men. 1"Official returns from the Quartermaster and Commissary Departments are not yet complete, but the returns already received by the QuartermasterGeneral show that the number of colored persons enrolled in its service as teamsters, etc., are over 11,000. The actual number, when all the official returns come in, will probably more than double this number. They are equivalent to an equal number of white persons. The commissary's returns are too incomplete to afford a basis of any estimate, but will, at least, amount to onehalf of the Quartermaster's Department. To the above number are to be added the cooks, officers' servants, etc., amounting to several thousands." This magnificent exhibit is a testimony to Mr. CHAP. XX. Lincoln's statesmanship which can hardly be overvalued. If he had adopted the policy when it was first urged upon him by impulsive enthusiasts, it would have brought his Administration to political wreck, as was clearly indicated by the serious election reverses of 1862. But restraining the impatience and the bad judgment of his advisers, and using that policy at the opportune moment, he not only made it a powerful lever to effect emancipation, but a military overweight aiding effectually to crush the remaining rebel armies and bring the rebellion, as a whole, to a speedy and sudden collapse. One point of doubt about employing negroes as soldiers was happily removed almost imperceptibly by the actual experiment. It had been a serious question with many thoughtful men whether the negro would fight. It was apprehended that his comparatively recent transition from barbarism to civilization, and the inherited habits of subjection and dependence imposed upon him by two centuries of enslavement, had left his manhood so dwarfed and deadened as to render him incapable of the steady and sustained physical and moral courage needful to armies in modern warfare. Practical trial in skirmish and battle, however, proved the gallantry and reliability of the black soldier in the severest trials of devotion and heroism. Within half a year after Lincoln's order of enlistment the black regiments had furnished such examples of bravery on many fields that commanders gave them unstinted praise and white officers and soldiers heartily accepted them as worthy and trusted companions in arms. CHAPTER XXI CHAP. XXI. 1862. Lee to Halleck, Aug. 2, 1862. Moore, "Rebellion Record." Vol. IX., TH RETALIATION HE rebel authorities watched the experiment of arming the blacks with the keenest apprehension and hostility. In Mr. Lincoln's order of July 22, 1862, directing military commanders to seize and use property, real or personal, for military purposes, and to employ "persons of African descent as laborers," Jefferson Davis professed already to discover a wicked violation of the laws of war, apparently forgetting that his own generals were everywhere using such persons in military labor. When it was learned that Hunter and Phelps were endeavoring to organize negro regiments, the language employed to express Southern affectation of surprise and protest bordered on the ludicrous. "The best authenticated newspapers received from the United States," writes General Lee, "announce as a fact that Major-General Hunter has armed slaves for the murder of their masters, and has thus done all in his power to inaugurate a servile war, which is worse than that of the savage, inasmuch as it superadds other horrors to the indiscriminate slaughter of ages, sexes, and conditions"; and Phelps is charged with imitating the bad example. General Halleck very properly returned this and another letter, as insulting to the CHAP. XXI. Government of the United States. A little later the Confederate War Department issued a formal order: That Major-General Hunter and Brigadier-General Phelps be no longer held and treated as public enemies of the Confederate States, but as outlaws; and that in the event of the capture of either of them, or that of any other commissioned officer employed in drilling, organizing, or instructing slaves, with a view to their armed service in this war, he shall not be regarded as a prisoner of war, but held in close confinement for execution as a felon at such time and place as the President shall order. General W. R. p. 599. Mr. Davis seems to have cultivated a sort of literary pride in these formulas of invective, for in his sensational proclamation of outlawry against General Butler and all commissioned officers in his command he repeats: "African slaves have not only been incited to insurrection by every license and encouragement, but numbers of them have actually been armed for a servile war-a war in its nature far exceeding the horrors and most merciless atrocities of savages." In this it was ordered "that all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the laws of said States"; and that Butler and his commissioned officers, "robbers and criminals deserving death, Cyclopa be, whenever captured, reserved for execution." President Lincoln's two proclamations of emancipation excited similiar threats. About a week after the first was issued it was made a subject of discussion in the Confederate Senate at Richmond, and a Confederate writer recorded in his diary the Davis, Proclamation, Dec. 23, 1862. "Annual dia," 1862, p. 738. Jones, "A Rebel Diary." Vol. I., p. 159. Davis, Annual Message, January 12, 1863. "Annual CHAP. XXI. next day: "Some of the gravest of our senators favor the raising of the black flag, asking and War Clerk's giving no quarter hereafter." When the final proclamation reached Richmond Jefferson Davis was writing his annual message to the rebel Congress, and he ransacked his dictionary for terms to stigmatize it. "Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in Cyclop the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses." This new provocation also broadened his field of retaliation. He now declared that he would deliver “such criminals as may attempt its execution”— all commissioned officers of the United States captured in States embraced in the proclamation-to the executives of such States, to be punished for exciting servile insurrection. dia," 1863, p. 786. 1863. C. 8. Statutes-atLarge for 1863, p. 167. The Confederate Congress, while responding to the full degree of the proposed retaliation, nevertheless preferred to keep the power of such punishment in the hands of the central military authorities, apparently as promising a more certain and summary execution. That body passed a joint resolution, approved by Davis May 1, 1863, which prescribed that white officers of negro Union soldiers "shall, if captured, be put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the court," the trial to take place "before the military court attached to the army or corps" making the capture, or such other military court as the Confederate President should designate. The Confederate Cabinet seems to have been quite ready to execute this law of summary retaliation prescribed by the Confederate Congress. In a |