"I am content, if such be the will of Providence to ascend the scaffold made sacred by the blood of this martyr; and I rejoice at every prospect of making our struggle more earnest and inexorable on both sides; for the sharper the conflict the sooner ended; the more vigorous and remorseless the strife, the less blood must be shed in it eventually.
"In conclusion, let me assure you, that I rejoice with my whole heart that your order in my case, and that of my officers, if unrevoked, will untie our hands for the future; and that we shall be able to treat rebellion as it deserves, and give to the felony of treason a felon's death.
"Very obediently yours,
DAVID HUNTER, Maj.-Gen."
"Not long after General Hunter's return to the Department of the South, the first step towards organizing and recognizing negro troops was taken by our Government, in a letter of instructions directing Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton—then Military Governor of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, within the limits of Gen. Hunter's command—to forthwith raise and organize fifty thousand able-bodied blacks, for service as laborers in the quartermaster's department; of whom five thousand—only five thousand, mark you—might be armed and drilled as soldiers for the purpose of 'protecting the women and children of their fellow-laborers who might be absent from home in the public service.'
"Here was authority given to Gen. Saxton, over Hunter's head, to pursue some steps farther the experiment which Hunter—soon followed by General Phelps, also included in the rebel order of 'outlawry'—had been the first to initiate. The rebel order still remained in full force, and with no protest against it on the part of our Government; nor to our knowledge, was any demand from Washington ever made for its revocation during the existence of the Confederacy. If Hunter, therefore, or any of his officers, had been captured in any of the campaigns of the past two and a half years, they had the pleasant knowledge for their comfort that any rebel officers into whose hands they might fall, was strictly enjoined to—not 'shoot them on the spot,' as was the order of General Dix, but to hang them on the first tree; and hang them quickly.
OFF FOR THE WAR.
Negro men marching aboard a steamer to join their regiments at Hilton Head, S. C.
"With the subsequent history of our black troops the public is already familiar. General Lorenzo Thomas, titular Adjutant-General of our army, not being regarded as a very efficient officer for that place, was permanently detailed on various services; now exchanging prisoners, now discussing points of military law, now organizing black brigades down the Mississippi and elsewhere. In fact, the main object seemed to be to keep this Gen. Thomas—who must not be confounded with Gen. George H. Thomas, one of the true heroes of our army,—away from the Adjutant-General's office at Washington, in order that Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend—only a Colonel until quite recently—might perform all the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant-General of our army, while only signing himself and ranking as First Assistant Adjutant-General. If there be an officer who has done noble service in the late war while receiving no public credit for the same,—no newspaper puffs nor public ovation,—that man is Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend, who should long since have been made a major-general, to rank from the first day of the rebellion.
"And now let us only add, as practical proof that the rebels, even in their most rabid state, were not insensible to the force of proper "reasons," the following anecdote: Some officers of one of the black regiments—Colonel Higginson's, we believe—indiscreetly rode beyond our lines around St. Augustine in pursuit of game, but whether feathered or female this deponent sayeth not. Their guide proved to be a spy, who had given notice of the intended expedition to the enemy, and the whole party were soon surprised and captured. The next we heard of them, they were confined in the condemned cells of one of the Florida State prisons, and were to be "tried"—i. e., sentenced and executed—as 'having been engaged in inciting negro insurrection.'