"The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that the mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still must it be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
It was the recognition of these principles that made the people patient under the severe afflictions, the disasters, the failures. Fathers and mothers, weeping for their sons slain in battle, said to their hearts, "Be still!" for they saw that God was leading the people, through suffering, to recognize justice and righteousness as the Republic,—that thus he was saving the nation from perdition.
The heroism of the colored soldiers, and their splendid achievements, won the respect of the army. Their patriotism was as sublime, their courage as noble, as that of their whiter-hued comrades boasting Anglo-Saxon blood, nurtured and refined by centuries of civilization.
On the morning after the battle, an officer, passing through the hospital, came upon a colored soldier who had lost his left leg.
"Well, my boy, I see that you have lost a leg for glory," said the officer.
One day's labor, one day's income.
"No, sir; I have not lost it for glory, but for the elevation of my race!"
It was a reply worthy of historic record, to be read, through the coming centuries, by every sable son of Africa, and by every man, of whatever lineage or clime, struggling to better his condition.