CHAPTER XLV.

EMANCIPATION.

Sambo in the Union Lines. The Loyal Chattel. - Lincoln on the
His Solemn Vow. -The Emancipation Proclamation. - Prejudice

The Day of Jubilee. Union and Slavery. against Negro Soldiers.

THERE are certain anniversaries which ought to be sacred to every American citizen. I need not tell you that we all should honor the Fourth of July, the day on which this nation was born. I hope and believe the day is fast coming when every patriotic American will revere equally the first day of January, 1863. On that day the bondmen and bondwomen of the United States were proclaimed free men and women. Slavery, which had been a shame and reproach to this country among all the civilized nations, was abolished, and we were able to say of America, as one of her poets had said of England,

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country and their shackles fall.”

The war did not at first make much difference in the opinion of the North about slavery. The people said, this is a "War for the Union," and went into it with little consideration for the negro. But it was very soon found that the negro kept getting in the way. When General Butler found them set to work by their masters, near Fortress Monroe, digging fortifications to keep out our armies, he decided they were "contraband" as much as corn or cotton. When Frémont saw that the masters in Missouri were disloyal, and that their slaves were loyal, he pronounced the loyal men free men. But when Halleck took Frémont's place, he changed all this, ordered the negroes to take themselves off, and allowed the masters to come and take away their escaping slaves.

There was, of course, a great difference of feeling among army officers, about slavery. When the rebel masters came to the Union camp, asking if their "boy Jim," "Sambo," or "Pompey " was within our lines, and requesting permission to look for him there, some of the officers politely escorted the slave-owner through the camp, offering every assistance to find the poor, half-starved wretch, who had come to the Union lines, believing that Freedom traveled along with its banners. In Missouri, during the war, some bright,

wide-awake negroes brought to our camp valuable news of the enemy's movements. A little later the owner of these men came to demand that they should be returned to him. The slaves, perhaps warned of the coming of the master, had already fled. Well, how did the Union officer treat the disloyal master claiming to own these men, who had given proof of their devotion to this country? They mounted their horses and went off with the master to hunt down the slaves, and in taking them, one of the Union officers shot the slave who had so well earned his right to be a free man under the flag he had served. On the other hand there were officers who, in spite of orders admitting owners into the lines to take away their chattels," said, "No! I did not come here to be a slave-hunter. No man shall enter my camp for that purpose. The enemies of my country are my enemies. Its friends, black or white, are my friends!"

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The soldiers, a very large part of them, went into the war opposed to "fighting a war for the negroes." They fought for the Union, and wanted to let slavery alone. But when, month after month, they saw the negro, loyal through all discouragement and repulse, welcoming everywhere the march of our army; when they heard the stories told by the slaves at camp-fires, where they sought shelter; when they found that wherever the hand of the white was raised to strike and curse them, the hand of the black was outstretched in help and blessing, the soldiers began to change their minds on the subject. There were more men who became "Abolitionists" in the United States army during the two first years of the war, than all the numbers put together who had joined that little party under William Lloyd Garrison's noble teachings.

Poor Mr. Lincoln in the White House at Washington, his sad eyes every day growing sadder as he carried the heavy load of duties his office brought him, was always very much troubled by the slavery question. In his heart he hated slavery, believed it a sin, and had believed so from boyhood. But he believed himself a servant of the great people, put into his place to obey their bidding. It was his duty to save the nation's life, and bring her out from her great danger; not to touch slavery unless her safety demanded it. He said:

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I

would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save this Union."

Of course he was assailed on both sides. Bodies of men waited on him, begging him not to touch slavery. If he did so he would lose the sympathy of thousands in the border States who held slaves, and yet had clung to the Union. Other bodies of men waited on him, begging him to emancipate the slaves; telling him that the sympathies of all foreign nations would be with us if we only showed that we warred against slavery; declaring that the back-bone of rebellion would be broken if slavery were destroyed.

Between them both Lincoln stood, often solely tried and perplexed in the extreme. At length, in August, 1862, he called together his cabinet, and showed them a copy of a proclamation freeing all slaves of rebel owners. His secretary of state, Willliam H. Seward, a thoughtful statesman, and long known as an antislavery man, begged him to wait a little. "We are in dark days now," said Seward," and this will look like a last measure, a cry to Ethiopia for help." So Mr. Lincoln put aside the paper. Shortly after came Pope's repulses in Virginia. Things looked darker and darker. Then the battle at Antietam drew near. "I made a solemn vow before God," said the president, talking of it afterwards, "that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland, I would crown the act by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."

Many vows of most solemn import have been offered up to the Almighty, but there are few in all history with so great a result as that which gave freedom to a race.

Therefore, on the 1st of January, 1863, President Lincoln announced to the nation, and to those in arms against it, that all the slaves of those at war against the government were thenceforth FREE. The rebels became bitterer than ever, and declared this last blow at their rights and their property had made it impossible for them ever to yield. They would die to the last man. Many in the North loudly denounced Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But in truth, almost every man in the United States whose heart was in the restoration of the Union, believed that the right thing had been done, and that now, for the first time, the God who parted the waters of the Red Sea that a race of bondmen might walk through to freedom, was ready to smile on our nation's cause.

From the beginning, negroes had been employed by the rebels to work on their fortifications, and dig in their trenches. As the prejudice against using them began to melt away in our armies, spades were put into their hands, and they were employed in our lines. In the summer of 1862 negro soldiers were talked of, and Congress passed a law the next spring, permitting the raising of black regiments. Massachusetts gave the first colored regiment to the country. It was known as the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, and its colonel, Robert G. Shaw, was descended from a noble line of antislavery ancestors.

This regiment, the first to shed its blood in the struggle which gave freedom to their race, was not permitted to pass through the city of New York, on their way to the seat of war. It was dangerous even then, in the metropolis of the nation, for a black man to wear the free garb of the soldier. The troops were therefore sent from Boston by water in May, 1863. But only a few months later, a negro regiment passed down Broadway, New York city, cheered by thousands, who came out to see them march. So rapid were the strides made by public opinion in the four years of the war, that only the seven-league boots of a Brobdignagian giant could keep up with it.

Western Men.

CHAPTER XLVI.

SIEGE OF VICKSBURG.

Surroundings of Vicksburg. · Digging a Canal again. Running the Batteries. Grant's Baggage.. The Assaults. Bombardment. - Surrender. - Port Hudson. - The Mississippi flows unvexed to the Sea.

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THE armies under Grant's command were largely made up of Western men, the men of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana. These men felt that the Mississippi River belonged to them. Το shut it up with hostile batteries, to divide it by stretching across it the boundary of a foreign nation, and so cut them off from the Gulf of Mexico, these men of the Northwest felt would be an unendur:ble injury. They were prepared to fight for their river till their blood flowed to the Gulf as freely as its waters. So while the East clamored, "On to Richmond," the West cried, "On to Vicksburg and New Orleans."

You have not forgotten how the glorious work of Farragut and

Butler gave us New Orleans in 1862. By that victory we held firmly the great mouths of the Mississippi. And by the conquests of Island No. 10 and Fort Pillow we held the river from its source to Memphis. The only places that opposed the passage of our boats from New Orleans to the Falls of St. Anthony, were Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana, one hundred and fifty miles up the river from New Orleans. Take these, and the river would be free.

But Vicksburg was thought to be invincible. After our gallant Farragut had taken New Orleans, he went up the river with gunboats to attack Vicksburg. Assisted by Commodore Porter, they had hammered on the town with cannon-ball and bomb-shell without making any impression on it. Disappointed and weary of the siege, they had turned back. The rebels boasted that Vicksburg could not be taken. The government and the people were almost inclined to believe their boasts.

But General U. S. Grant intended to take Vicksburg and open the Mississippi. It was what he came there for. Another great general had said, There is no such word as "impossible." Grant did not say this- he had very little to say at any time- but he acted it, which was better.

Vicksburg was built on the "bluffs," or heights, which rise up steeply from the flat bottom lands of the river. All through these bottom lands ran interlacing creeks, or bayous. These swampy stretches of land were covered with dense cypress woods, or impassable sloughs, in which a man would sink in mud up to his armpits. At various points in the approach, the swamps were made more difficult to traverse by trees felled to lie across each other, their branches left sticking up, so that it was almost impossible for an army to clamber through them. Inside the city and all about. the edges of the bluff, slaves had been at work for months throwing up fortifications. Do you wonder if it seemed that Vicksburg could not be taken?

The last month of the year 1862, Grant sent General Sherman