"To the Men of Color.—Soldiers! From the shores of Mobile I collected you to arms; I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you, for I was not uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the hardships of war; I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.
"Soldiers! The President of the United States shall be informed of your conduct on the present occasion; and the voice of the representatives of the American nation shall applaud your valor, as your general now praises your ardor. The enemy is near. His sails cover the lakes. But the brave are united; and if he finds us contending among ourselves, it will be for the prize of valor, and fame, its noblest reward."[4]
But in this war, as in the Revolutionary struggle, the commissioners who concluded the terms of peace, armed with ample and authentic evidence of the Negro's valorous services, placed him among chattel property.
And in no State in the South were the laws more rigidly enforced against Negroes, both free and slave, than in Louisiana. The efficient service of the Louisiana Negro troops in the war of 1812 was applauded on two continents at the time, but the noise of the slave marts soon silenced the praise of the "Black heroes of the battle of New Orleans."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Laws of the State of New York, passed at the Thirty-eighth Session of the Legislature, chap. xviii.
[3] Niles's Register, vol. vii. p. 205.
[4] Niles's Register, vol. vii. pp. 345, 346.