General Phelps's conduct would imply a censure of General Butler, whose conduct every candid person, I think, must admit, was just, forbearing, magnanimous.

We can not but regret that General Phelps could not have sympathized in some degree with the painful necessities of General Butler's position, and endeavored for a while to “get along" with the negro difficulty at Camp Parapet, as General Butler was striving to do at New Orleans. We should remember, however, that General Phelps had been waiting and longing for twenty-five years, and he could not foresee that, in six months more, the government would be as eager as himself in arming the slaves against their oppressors.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GENERAL BUTLER ARMS THE FREE COLORED MEN, AND FINDS WORK FOR THE FUGITIVE SLAVES.

GENERAL PHELPS might have seen the dawn of a brighter day, even before his departure. General Butler himself could wait no longer for the tardy action of the government. Denied re-enforcements from the North, he had determined to "call on Africa” to assist him in defending New Orleans from threatened attack. The spirited assault upon Baton Rouge on the fifth of August, though it was so gallantly repulsed by General Williams and his command, was a warning not to be disregarded. All the summer, General Butler had been asking for re-enforcements, pointing to the growing strength of Vicksburg, the rising batteries at the new rebel post of Port Hudson, the inviting condition of Mobile, the menacing camps near New Orleans, the virulence of the secessionists in the city. The uniform answer from the war department was: We can not spare you one man; we will send you men when we have them to send. You must hold New Orleans by all means and at all hazards.

So the general called on Africa. Not upon the slaves, but

upon the free colored men of the city, whom General Jackson had enrolled in 1814, and Governor Moore in 1861. He sent for sev

eral of the most influential of this class, and conversed freely with them upon his project. He asked them why they had accepted service under the Confederate government, which was set up for the distinctly avowed purpose of holding in eternal slavery their brethren and kindred. They answered, that they had not dared to refuse; that they had hoped, by serving the Confederates, to advance a little nearer to equality with whites; that they longed to throw the weight of their class into the scale of the Union, and only asked an opportunity to show their devotion to the cause with which their own dearest hopes were identified. The general took them at their word. The proper orders were issued. Enlistment offices were opened. Colored men were commissioned. Of the first colored regiment, all the field officers were white men, and all the line officers colored. Of the second, the colonel and lieutenantcolonel alone were white men, and all the rest colored. For the third, the officers were selected without the slightest regard to color; the best men that offered were taken, white or yellow. The two batteries of artillery were officered wholly by white men, for the simple reason that no colored men acquainted with artillery presented themselves as candidates for the commissions.

The free colored men of New Orleans flew to arms. One of the regiments of a thousand men was completed in fourteen days. In a very few weeks, General Butler had his three regiments of infantry and two batteries of artillery enrolled, equipped, officered, drilled, and ready for service. Better soldiers never shouldered arms. They were zealous, attentive, obedient, and intelligent. No men in the Union army had such a stake in the contest as they. Few understood it as well as they. The best blood of the South flowed in their veins, and a great deal of it; for "the darkest of them," said General Butler, "were about of the complexion of the late Mr. Webster." At Port Hudson, in the summer of 1863, these fine regiments, though shamefully despoiled of the colored officers to whom General Butler gave commissions, demonstrated to the whole army that witnessed their exploits, and to the whole country that read of them, their right to rank with the soldiers of the Union as brothers in arms.

This bold measure of General Butler-bold a year ago-was not

achieved without opposition. Public opinion, in New Orleans, was thus divided in regard to arming the free colored men: nearly every Union man in the city favored it; every secessionist opposed it. Many of the Union officers had not yet traveled far enough away from old hunkerism to approve the measure, but a large minority of them warmly seconded their general. There was but one breach of the peace in the city in connection with the colored troops. A party of them were stoned by some low Frenchmen, who, it appears, received, at the hands of the assailed soldiers, prompt and condign punishment. Need I say, that the French consul complained to General Butler? The general set the consul right as to the facts of the case, and, at the same time, asked him to warn his countrymen against the prejudices they may have imbibed, the same as were lately mine, against my colored soldiers, because their race is of the same hue and blood as those of your celebrated compatriot and author, Alexander Dumas, who, I believe, is treated with the utmost respect in Paris." In fact, a majority of these colored soldiers are whiter men than Dumas.

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In November, the colored regiments were employed in the field, in an expedition upon the western bank of the river. They were not engaged in actual conflict with the enemy, but their conduct, on all occasions, was most exemplary and soldier-like. Their presence in a region where there were ten slaves to one white man, was thought by General Weitzel to tend to provoke an insurrection. He was in so much dread of such an event, that he asked General Butler to relieve him of the command. The general replied in his usual exhaustive manner.

"You say," wrote General Butler, "that in these organizations you have no confidence. As your reading must have made you aware, General Jackson entertained a different opinion upon that subject. It was arranged between the commanding general and yourself, that the colored regiments should be employed in guarding the railroad. You don't complain, in your report, that they either failed in this duty, or that they have acted otherwise than correctly and obediently to the commands of their officers, or that they have committed any outrage or pillage upon the inhabitants. The general was aware of your opinion, that colored men will not fight. You have failed to show, by the conduct of these free men, so far, anything to sustain that opinion. And the general can not

see why you should decline the command, especially as you express a willingness to go forward to meet the only organized enemy with your brigade alone, without farther support. The commanding general can not see how the fact that they are guarding your line of communication by railroad, can weaken your defense. He must, therefore, look to the other reasons stated by you, for an explanation of your declining the command.

"You say that since the arrival of the negro regiment you have seen symptoms of a servile insurrection. But, as the only regiment. that arrived there got there as soon as your own command, of course the appearance of such symptoms is since their arrival.

"Have you not mistaken the cause? Is it the arrival of a negro regiment, or is it the arrival of United States troops, carrying by the act of congress freedom to this servile race? Did you expect to march into that country, drained, as you say it is, by conscription of all its able-bodied white men, without leaving the negroes free to show symptoms of servile insurrection? Does not this state of things arise from the very fact of war itself? You are in a country where now the negroes outnumber the whites ten to one, and these whites are in rebellion against the government, or in terror seeking its protection. Upon reflection, can you doubt that the same state of things would have arisen without the presence of a colored regiment? Did you not see symptoms of the same things upon the plantations here upon our arrival, although under much less favorable circumstances for revolt?

"You say that the prospect of such an insurrection is heart-rending, and that you can not be responsible for it. The responsibility rests upon those who have begun and carried out this war, and who have stopped at no barbarity, at no act of outrage, upon the citizens and soldiers of the United States. You have forwarded me the records of a pretended court-martial, showing that seven men of one of your regiments, who enlisted here in the Eighth Vermont, who had surrendered themselves prisoners of war, were in cold blood murdered, and, as certain information shows me, required to dig their own graves! You are asked if this is not an occurrence as heart-rending as a prospective servile insurrection.

"The question is now to be met, whether, in a hostile, rebellious part of the state, where this very murder has been committed by the militia, you are to stop in the operations of the field to put

down servile insurrection, because the men and women are terrorstricken? When ever was it heard before that a victorious general, in an unsurrendered province, stopped in his course for the purpose of preventing the rebellious inhabitants of that province from destroying each other, or refuse to take command of a conquered province lest he should be made responsible for their self-destruction ?

"As a military question, perhaps, the more terror-stricken the inhabitants are that are left in your rear, the more safe will be your lines of communication. You say there have appeared before your eyes the very facts, in terror-stricken women and children and men, which you had before contemplated in theory. Grant it. But is not the remedy to be found in the surrender of the neighbors, fathers, brothers, and sons of the terror-stricken women and children, who are now in arms against the government within twenty miles of you? And when that is done, and you have no longer to fear from these organized forces, and they have returned peaceably to their homes, you will be able to use the full power of your troops to insure your safety from the so much feared (by them, not by you) servile insurrection.

"If you desire, you can send a flag of truce to the commander of these forces, embracing these views, and placing upon him the responsibility which belongs to him. Even that course will not remove it from you, for upon you it has never rested. Say to them, that if all armed opposition to the authority of the United States shall cease in Louisiana, on the west bank of the river, you are authorized by the commanding general to say, that the same protection against negro or other violence will be afforded that part of Louisiana that has been in the part already in the possession of the United States. If that is refused, whatever may ensue is upon them, and not upon you or upon the United States. You will have done all that is required of a brave, humane man, to avert from these deluded people the horrible consequences of their insane war upon the government.

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"Consider this case. General Bragg is at liberty to ravage the houses of our brethren of Kentucky because the Union army of Louisiana are protecting his wife and his home against his negroes. Without that protection he would have to come back to take care of his wife, his home and his negroes. It is understood that Mrs.