"February 26th.—Mr. Hunter is now reproached by the slave-holders he thought to please for defeating the negro bill. They say his vote will make Virginia a free State, inasmuch as General Lee must evacuate it for want of negro troops."
"March 2d.—Negro bill still hangs fire in Congress."
"March 9th.—Yesterday the Senate passed the negro troops bill—Mr. Hunter voting for it under instruction."
"March 10th.—The president has the reins now, and Congress will be more obedient; but can they leave the city? Advertisements for recruiting negro troops are in the papers this morning."
"March 17th.—We shall have a negro army. Letters are pouring into the department from men of military skill and character asking authority to raise companies, battalions, and regiments of negro troops. It is a desperate remedy for the desperate case, and may be successful. If 200,000 efficient soldiers can be made of this material there is no conjecturing when the next campaign may end. Possibly 'over the border;' for a little success will elate our spirits extravagantly, and the blackened ruins of our towns, and the moans of women and children bereft of shelter, will appeal strongly to the army for vengeance."
"March 19th.—Unless food and men can be had Virginia must be lost. The negro experiment will soon be tested. Curtis says that the letters are pouring into the department from all quarters asking authority to raise and command negro troops. 100,000 troops from this source might do wonders."
So ends the entries on this interesting subject in Mr. Jones' diary. Though the conscientious war clerk ceased to record, the excitement and effort of the advocates of the measure by no means slackened. Grant's cordon around the city drew closer and tighter each day and hour, continually alarming the inhabitants. Governor Smith gave the negro soldier scheme his personal influence and attention. The newspapers began clamoring for conscription. No little effort was made to raise a regiment of free blacks and mulattoes in the latter days of January, and early in February a rendezvous was established at Richmond, and a proclamation was issued by the State authorities. A detail of white officers was made, and enlistment began. The agitation of the subject in Congress, though in secret session, gave some encouragement to the many despairing and heart-sick soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia.[43] Their chief commander, Lee, perhaps dreamed nightly that he commanded 200,000 negro troops en masse, and was driving the Yankees and their Black Phalanx like chaff from off the "sacred soil" of the Old Dominion, but, alas, such a dream was never to be realized.
About twenty negroes,[44] mostly of the free class, enlisted, went into camp, and were uniformed in Confederate gray. These twenty men, three of whom were slaves of Mr. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State, were daily marched into the city and drilled by their white officers in the Capitol Square, receiving the approving and congratulatory plaudits of the ladies, who were always present.[45] However, no accessions were gained to their ranks, consequently the scheme, to raise by enlistment a regiment of blacks, was a failure, for the few volunteers secured in Virginia and a company in Tennessee are all that the writer has been able to obtain any account of. The Confederate authorities then sought to strengthen the army by conscripting all able-bodied negroes, free and slave, between the age of eighteen and fifty. Monday, April 3d, was appointed as the day to begin the draft. The Virginia State Legislature had come to the rescue of the Davis-Lee-Benjamin scheme, and so had the local authorities of Richmond, but all was to no purpose. It was too late; they had delayed too long.
With a pitiable blindness to the approach of his downfall, only a few days before he became a fugitive, Jefferson Davis wrote the following letter:[46]