WHY COLORED MEN SHOULD ENLIST IN THE ARMY.
Extract from speech delivered at a mass meeting held in Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the promotion of enlistment of colored men in the Union Army. The efficiency of colored troops having been demonstrated by recent battles in the Southwest, several hundred gentlemen of Philadelphia addressed a memorial to the Secretary of War, asking authority to raise three regiments for three years of the war, from among the colored population of Pennsylvania. Permission to this effect was promptly given. Accordingly a mass meeting was called to arouse the colored people to prompt action. Judge Kelly and Frederick Douglass spoke at the same meeting, but Miss Dickinson’s appeal was the oratorical feature of the occasion. We quote the extract below as a specimen of her eloquence.
RUE, through the past we have advocated the use of the black man. For what end? To save ourselves. We wanted them as shields, as barriers, as walls of defence. We would not even say to them, fight beside us. We would put them in the front; their brains contracted, their souls dwarfed, their manhood stunted; mass them together; let them die! That will cover and protect us. Now we hear the voice of the people, solemn and sorrowful, saying, “We have wronged you enough; you have suffered enough; we ask no more at your hands; we stand aside, and let you fight for your own manhood, your future, your race.” (Applause.) Anglo-Africans, we need you; yet it is not because of this need that I ask you to go into the ranks of the regiments forming to fight in this war. My cheeks would crimson with shame, while my lips put the request that could be answered, “Your soldiers? why don’t you give us the same bounty, and the same pay as the rest?” I have no reply to that. (Sensation.)
But for yourselves; because, after ages of watching and agony, your day is breaking; because your hour is come; because you hold the hammer which, upheld or falling, decides your destiny for woe or weal; because you have reached the point from which you must sink, generation after generation, century after century, into deeper depths, into more absolute degradation; or mount to the heights of glory and fame.
The cause needs you. This is not our war, not a war for territory; not a war for martial power, for mere victory; it is a war of the races, of the ages; the stars and stripes is the people’s flag of the world; the world must be gathered under its folds, the black man beside the white. (Cheers and applause.)
Thirteen dollars a month and bounty are good; liberty is better. Ten dollars a month and no bounty are bad; slavery is worse. The two alternatives are put before you; you make your own future. The to be will, in a little while, do you justice. Soldiers will be proud to welcome as comrades, as brothers, the black men of Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend. Congress, next winter, will look out through the fog and mist of Washington, and will see how, when Pennsylvania was invaded and Philadelphia threatened, while white men haggled over bounty and double pay to defend their own city, their own homes, with the tread of armed rebels almost heard in their streets; black men, without bounty, without pay, without rights or the promise of any, rushed to the [♦]beleaguered capital, and were first in their offers of life or of death. (Cheers and applause.) Congress will say, “These men are soldiers; we will pay them as such; these men are marvels of loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage; we will give them a chance of promotion.” History will write, “Behold the unselfish heroes; the eager martyrs of this war.” (Applause.) You hesitate because you have not all. Your brothers and sisters of the South cry out, “Come to help us, we have nothing.” Father! you hesitate to send your boy to death; the slave father turns his face of dumb entreaty to you, to save his boy from the death in life; the bondage that crushes soul and body together. Shall your son go to his aid? Mother! you look with pride at the young manly face and figure, growing and strengthening beside you! he is yours; your own. God gave him to you. From the lacerated hearts, the wrung souls of other mothers, comes the wail, “My child, my child; give me back my child!” The slave-master heeds not; the government is tardy; mother! the prayer comes to you; will you falter?
[♦] “beleagured” replaced with “beleaguered”
Young man, rejoicing in the hope, the courage, the will, the thews and muscles of young manhood—the red glare of this war falls on the faces and figures of other young men, distorted with suffering, writhing in agony, wrenching their manacles and chains—shouting with despairing voices to you for help—shall it be withheld? (Cries of No! No!)