“Massachusetts now welcomes you to arms as soldiers. She has but a small colored population from which to recruit. She has full leave of the general government to send one regiment to the war, and she has undertaken to do it. Go quickly and help fill up the first colored regiment from the North. I am authorized to assure you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment, and the same bounty, secured to white soldiers. You will be led by able and skilful officers, men who will take special pride in your efficiency and success. They will be quick to accord to you all the honor you shall merit by your valor, and to see that your rights and feelings are respected by other soldiers. I have assured myself on these points. More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis. I will not argue. To do so implies hesitation and doubt, and you do not hesitate; you do not doubt. The day dawns. The morning star is bright upon the horizon. The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty.
“The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men. Remember Denmark Vesey, of Charleston; remember Shields Green, and Copeland, who followed noble John Brown, and fell as glorious martyrs for the cause of the slave. Remember that in a contest with oppression, the Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with the oppressors. The case is before you. This is our golden opportunity. Let us accept it and forever wipe out the dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time. The nucleus of this first regiment is now in camp at Readville, a short distance from Boston. I will undertake to forward to Boston all persons adjudged fit to be mustered into the regiment, who shall apply to me at once, or at any time within the next two weeks.”
The immediate effect of the enlistment of colored troops in the Union army was to call forth a feeling of resentment on the part of the white soldiers of the South. It is asking too much of human nature to have expected anything else. The prejudice instantly found official expression in the proclamation by the Confederate government that it would treat white officers of colored troops and colored soldiers when captured, as felons; Negro Union prisoners would be shot or sent back to slavery. This threat was literally carried out in several instances. For nearly a year the Confederate armies pursued this course toward black men who were caught wearing the uniform of a Union soldier.
During all this time the Federal government was silent: no word of protest and no threat of retaliation. Horace Greeley in the Tribune put the matter in strong terms when he stated that “every black soldier now goes to battle with a halter about his neck.... The simple question is, Shall we protect and insure to our Negro soldiers the ordinary treatment of a prisoner of war? Every Negro yet captured has suffered death or been sent back to the hell of slavery, from which he had escaped.”
The colored people in the North were for a time thoroughly discouraged. The government, it seemed to them, put a low estimate upon them as soldiers. When Mr. Douglass was appealed to by Major George L. Stearns, an Abolitionist, and friend of John Brown, he expressed himself in part as follows:
“I am free to say, dear sir, that the case looks as if the confiding colored soldiers had been betrayed into bloody hands by the government in whose defense they had been so heroically fighting.... If the President is ever to demand justice and humanity for black soldiers, is not this the time for him to do it? How many Fifty-fourth men must be cut to pieces, its mutilated prisoners killed and the living sold into slavery or tortured to death by inches, before Mr. Lincoln shall say, ‘Hold! Enough’?”
Appeals of this kind finally had the effect of moving the government to action. In order himself to be sure as to just what it intended to do, and before inducing any other colored men to go to the front, Mr. Douglass made up his mind to see the President personally. It was, at this time, an unheard-of thing for a colored man to go to the White House with a grievance, but he had many influential friends and admirers in Washington, who assured him that he would be well treated. Senators Sumner, Wilson, and Pomeroy; Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Assistant Secretary of War Dana, all guaranteed him a safe passage into Mr. Lincoln’s presence. Senator Pomeroy introduced Mr. Douglass, and they soon found that they had much in common. The one had traveled a long hard journey from the slave-cabin of Maryland, and the other a thorny road from the scant and rugged life in Kentucky, to the high position of President. The one was too great to be a slave, and the other too noble to remain, in such a national crisis, a private citizen. Mr. Douglass’s account of this historic interview with the President, the first instance of the kind, I believe, in the history of the country, is worth reproducing:
“I was accompanied to the Executive Mansion and introduced to President Lincoln by Senator Pomeroy. Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln’s brow, and his strong face lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned. As I approached and was introduced to him, he arose and extended his hand and bade me welcome. I at once felt that I was in the presence of an honest man—one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to tell him who I was and what I was doing, he promptly but kindly stopped me, saying, ‘I know who you are, Mr. Douglass; Mr. Seward has told me about you. Sit down. I am glad to see you.’ I then told him the object of my visit; that I was assisting to raise colored troops; that several months before I had been very successful in getting men to enlist, but that now it was not easy to induce the colored men to enter the service because there was a feeling among them that the government did not, in several respects, deal fairly with them. Mr. Lincoln asked me to state particulars. I replied that there were three particulars which I wished to bring to his attention. First, that colored soldiers ought to receive the same wages as those paid to white soldiers. Second, that colored soldiers ought to receive the same protection when taken prisoners, and be exchanged as readily and on the same terms as any other prisoners, and that, if Jefferson Davis should shoot or hang colored soldiers in cold blood, the United States government should, without delay, retaliate in kind and degree upon Confederate soldiers in its hands as prisoners. Third, when colored soldiers, seeking ‘the bubble reputation, at the cannon’s mouth’ performed great and uncommon service on the battle-field, they should be rewarded by distinction and promotion precisely as white soldiers are rewarded for like services.
“Mr. Lincoln listened with patience and silence to all I had to say. He was serious and even troubled by what I had said and by what he himself had evidently before thought upon the same points. He, by his silent listening, not less than by his earnest reply to my words, impressed me with the solid gravity of his character.
“He began by saying that the employment of colored troops at all was a great gain to the colored people; that the measure could not have been successfully adopted at the beginning of the war; that the wisdom of making colored men soldiers was still doubted; that their enlistment was a serious offense to popular prejudice; that they had larger motives for being soldiers than white men; that they ought to be willing to enter the service upon condition; that the fact that they were not to receive the same pay as white soldiers seemed a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all as soldiers, but that ultimately they would receive the same. On the second point, in respect to equal protection he said the case was more difficult. Retaliation was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very difficult to apply; that, if once begun, there was no telling where it would end; that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings. He thought that the rebels themselves would stop such barbarous warfare; that less evil would be done if retaliation were not resorted to and that he had already received information that colored soldiers were being treated as prisoners of war. In all this I saw the tender heart of the man rather than the stern warrior and commander-in-chief of the American army and navy, and while I could not agree with him, I could but respect his humane spirit.