"Mrs. Haviland, we have had a good deal of sifting done in the army, and more must be done yet. Did General Tuttle see those papers you gave me?"
"He did," I answered.
"Copperheads have no business in the army in the exercise of such authority as this. General Tuttle ran for governor on the Copperhead ticket in Iowa last year. What right has a copperhead to be lifted up here, where loyal men are needed? I have never seen the least cause to abandon my first conclusion, that the only way to crush this rebellion was to emancipate and arm the slaves; and if I could have been permitted to carry out my plan of taking Kentucky into my field, as my rank and position entitled me to do, I should have proclaimed freedom to the slaves as fast as I reached them. The strength I could have gathered from the slave population would soon have been two hundred thousand men, and that number of stand of arms was all I asked. But the vacillating policy of the government would not permit it. I saw clearly that this was the only policy that would prove successful, and I thought every body else must see it when I first proclaimed it in South Carolina. It seemed there were others who took a different view, and my order was superseded."
Said sister Backus, "You have the satisfaction of knowing that your policy had to be adopted before the nation could succeed."
"O, yes," replied he reluctantly; "but it is with regret that I think of the drafting of thousands, which might have been avoided just as well as not. There was no necessity for the draft."
Sister Backus remarked, "As a nation, we must suffer defeats until it reaches the right position, not only in arming colored men, but in paying them just wages; for they make as good soldiers as white men."
A bystander said, "I don't know that they make as good soldiers as white men, from the fact that they are not so intelligent. Here is General Hunter, and I presume he will say the same thing"—turning to him for an answer.
In a decided tone the general said, "I shall say no such thing. They make the best of soldiers; for, first, they are kind and docile; and, second, they are apt to learn. They learn military tactics very readily, and ought to have the same wages as any other soldier. All along this river I find one continued series of wrongs inflicted upon the negro."
We told him of the infamous order by Dr. Kelley, sanctioned by General Tuttle, and published under the specious guise of "Health Order," to drive the slaves back to their masters. He shook his head in disgust.
"Why does the head of this serpent rise up at almost every point? When it appeared in the department under my command I crushed it at once."