"R. S. DAVIS, Capt. and A. A. A. G."
Notwithstanding the harsh treatment they had been receiving from Military-Governor Shepley and the Provost Guard, the rendezvous designated was the scene of a busy throng the next day. Thousands of men were enlisted during the first week, and in fourteen days a regiment was organized. The first regiment's line officers were colored, and the field officers were white. Those who made up this regiment were not all free negroes by more than half. Any negro who would swear that he was free, if physically good, was accepted, and of the many thousand slave fugitives in the city from distant plantations, hundreds found their way into Touro building and ultimately into the ranks of the three regiments formed at that building. The second, like the first, had all colored line officers; the third was officered regardless of color. This was going beyond the line laid down by General Phelps. He proposed that white men should take command of these troops exclusively. By November these three regiments were in the field, where in course of time they often met their former masters face to face and exchanged shots with them. The pro-slavery men of the North and their newspapers endeavored to make the soldiers in the field believe that the negroes would not fight; while not only the papers and the soldiers, but many officers, especially those from the West Point Academy, denounced General Butler for organizing the regiments. General Weitzel, to whose command these regiments were assigned in an expedition up the river, objected to them, and asked Butler to relieve him of the command of the expedition. Butler wrote him in reply:
"You say that in these organizations you have no confidence. As your reading must have made you aware, General Jackson entertained a different opinion upon that subject. It was arranged between the commanding general and yourself, that the colored regiments should be employed in guarding the railroad. You don't complain, in your report, that they either failed in this duty, or that they have acted otherwise than correctly and obediently to the commands of their officers, or that they have committed any outrage or pillage upon the inhabitants. The general was aware of your opinion, that colored men will not fight. You have failed to show, by the conduct of these free men, so far, anything to sustain that opinion. And the general cannot see why you should decline the command, especially as you express a willingness to go forward to meet the only organized enemy with your brigade alone, without farther support. The commanding general cannot see how the fact that they are guarding your line of communication by railroad, can weaken your defense. He must, therefore, look to the other reasons stated by you, for an explanation of your declining the command.
"You say that since the arrival of the negro regiment you have seen symptoms of a servile insurrection. But as the only regiment that arrived there got there as soon as your own command, of course the appearance of such symptoms is since their arrival.
"Have you not mistaken the cause? Is it the arrival of a negro regiment, or is it the arrival of United States troops, carrying by the act of congress freedom to this servile race? Did you expect to march into that country, drained, as you say it is, by conscription of all its able-bodied white men, without leaving the negroes free to show symptoms of servile insurrection? Does not this state of things arise from the very fact of war itself? You are in a country where now the negroes outnumber the whites ten to one, and these whites are in rebellion against the government, or in terror seeking its protection. Upon reflection, can you doubt that the same state of things would have arisen without the presence of a colored regiment? Did you not see symptoms of the same things upon the plantations here upon our arrival, although, under much less favorable circumstances for revolt?
"You say that the prospect of such an insurrection is heart-rending, and that you cannot be responsible for it. The responsibility rests upon those who have begun and carried out this war, and who have stopped at no barbarity, at no act of outrage, upon the citizens and soldiers of the United States. You have forwarded me the records of a pretended court-martial, showing that seven men of one of your regiments, who enlisted here in the Eighth Vermont, who had surrendered themselves prisoners of war, were in cold blood murdered, and, as certain information shows me, required to dig their own graves! You are asked if this is not an occurrence as heart-rending as a prospective servile insurrection.
"The question is now to be met, whether, in a hostile, rebellious part of the state, where this very murder has been committed by the militia, you are to stop in the operations of the field to put down servile insurrection, because the men and women are terror-stricken? Whenever was it heard before that a victorious general, in an unsurrendered province, stopped in his course for the purpose of preventing the rebellious inhabitants of that province from destroying each other, or refuse to take command of a conquered province lest he should be made responsible for their self-destruction?
"As a military question, perhaps, the more terror-stricken the inhabitants are that are left in your rear, the more safe will be your lines of communication. You say there have appeared before your eyes the very facts, in terror-stricken women and children and men, which you had before contemplated in theory. Grant it. But is not the remedy to be found in the surrender of the neighbors, fathers, brothers, and sons of the terror-stricken women and children, who are now in arms against the government within twenty miles of you? And when that is done, and you have no longer to fear from these organized forces, and they have returned peaceably to their homes, you will be able to use the full power of your troops to insure your safety from the so much feared (by them, not by you) servile insurrection.
POINT ISABEL, TEXAS.
Phalanx soldiers on duty, throwing up earthworks.