CHAP. XX. by the Union army. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, General Butler says: "Upon examining the records I found that Governor Moore of Louisiana had raised a regiment of free colored people, and organized it and officered it; and I found one of his commissions. I sent for a colored man as an officer of that regiment, and got some fifteen or sixteen of the officers together-black and mulatto, light and dark colored-and asked them what they meant by being organized under the rebels. They said they had been ordered out and could not refuse; but that the rebels had never trusted them with arms. They had been drilled in company drill. I asked them if that organization could be resuscitated, provided they were supplied with arms. They said that it could. Very well, I said, then I will resuscitate that regiment of Louisiana Militia. I thereupon issued an order, stating the precedent furnished by Governor Moore, and in a week from that time I had in that regiment a thousand men, reasonably drilled and well disciplined; better disciplined than any other regiment I had there, because the blacks Testimony, had been always taught to do as they were told. Committee It was composed altogether of free men; made free of the War. under some law." Early in September the general reported, "I shall also have within ten days a regiment, one thousand strong, of native guards (colored), the darkest of whom will be about the complexion of the late Mr. Webster."

Butler,

Report

on Conduct

Butler to Stanton, Sept., 1862. W. R. Vol. XV., p. 559.

This example is also important in illustrating the influence of public opinion on the question. New Orleans had a large foreign population, and many of the native whites had their sentiments and tradi

tions modified to a great extent by their European CHAP. XX. origin. The race prejudice of Richmond and Charleston did not exist in New Orleans in its full intensity, and its absence had enabled the rebel Governor of Louisiana to form his regiment of free blacks for rebel service. French and English law did not permit citizens of those countries to hold slaves, a circumstance which furnished both the Governor and General Butler a large proportion of free blacks, and afforded the former the pretext of employing them under military organization to protect the persons and property of their alien masters. "I accordingly enlisted one regiment and part of another from men in that condition," continues General Butler. "We had a great many difficulties about it. But the English consul came very fairly up to the mark, and decided that the negroes claimed as slaves by those who had registered themselves as British subjects were all free. So that I never enlisted a slave. Indeed, it was a general order that no slave should of the war. be enlisted."

Another resource for negro recruits grew out of the fact that one of the general's expeditions took military possession of a large district in which were located the heavy sugar plantations of Louisiana, and which contained 15,000 to 20,000 slaves. Under section nine of the Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, all these slaves became free, and from their number Butler obtained enough additional black recruits to complete a second and third regiment of negro infantry, and also a negro regiment of heavy artillery. Three of these regiments were employed in military duty, one in the city of New

Butler, Testimony, Report Committee on Conduct

CHAP. XX. Orleans, the other two to guard the Opelousas

Railroad west of New Orleans. The remaining regiments he found it necessary to employ in agricultural service. The same spirit that moved planters to burn their cotton induced a combination among them in the district occupied by the Federal army to abstain from the necessary fall layering of sugar cane for the next year's crop; and to this duty, as well as providing for other crops to sustain the slave population, Butler assigned one of his black regiments.

From the result we have summarized it is evident that without President Lincoln's policy and decrees of military emancipation the negro population would have furnished but a scanty addition to the armies fighting to maintain the Union; nor, indeed, did the mere issuing of the final proclamation of January 1, 1863, work any sudden transformation. The full manhood which springs from liberty and individual self-assertion needed still to be aroused and stimulated; and the President lost no time in setting on foot earnest practical efforts to realize the substantial benefits he had contemplated. Accordingly, he wrote to General Dix, commanding at Fort Monroe, on the 14th of January, 1863: "The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding-at best were progressing too slowly-without it. Now that we have it, and bear all the disadvantages of it (as we do bear some in certain quarters), we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I therefore will thank you for your well-considered opinion whether Fort Monroe and Yorktown, one or both, 1863. Ms. could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by

Lincoln to

Dix,

Jan. 14,

colored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places to be employed elsewhere."

CHAP. XX.

1863.

General Dix had been a Buchanan Democrat until the outbreak of the rebellion, and when we take his political antecedents and prejudices into account his answer was reasonably promising even with its coldness and want of faith. Fort Monroe, he thought, was too important to be intrusted to colored troops; at Yorktown, perhaps, they might be used to the extent of one-half the necessary garrison. But he said: "I doubt very much whether colored troops can be raised here. An officer from Massachusetts, who has taken an interest in the question, interrogated the adult males of the colored population at Camp Hamilton and Newport News, and found only five or six who were willing to take up arms. The general reply was that they were willing to work, but did not wish to fight. I deem it not improper to say further that the feeling towards the North among a considerable portion of the colored refugees is not a cordial one. They understand that we deny them in many of the free States the right of suffrage, and that, even in those where political equality is theoretically established by law, social prejudices to Lincoln, practically neutralize it."

The President waited some weeks, and then turned his inquiry in another direction. On the 26th of March, 1863, he wrote to Andrew Johnson, at Nashville, then military governor of the State of Tennessee: "I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability and position to go to

Dix

Jan. 15, 1863. MS.

1863.

Andrew

Johnson, March 26,

once.

CHAP. XX. this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave State, and himself a slaveholder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed-of force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at And who doubts that we can present that Lincoln to sight if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it, please do not dismiss the 1863. MS. thought." There is no record that Governor Johnson ever made any reply to this proposal of the President. The Governor was already rendering important public service, and he perhaps reasoned justly that the time had not arrived when he could undertake a leadership full of such difficulties, uncertainties, and risks; although later in the same year he took hold of the task in a more restricted and qualified way, and cordially gave his personal and executive assistance in organizing colored regiments.

Meanwhile, under the combined influence of patriotism and military ambition, many Northern men of prominence and energy, and also imbued with liberal and progressive sentiments, came forward and volunteered their services to officer and organize negro regiments in the South. It required courage at that time to take this step, for the Confederate authorities had published a ban of outlawry and retaliation against all who should serve in such a capacity. A few days after his letter to Governor Johnson, the President wrote to General Banks, at New Orleans: "Hon. Daniel Ullman, with a commission of a brigadier-general, and two or three