“Go to your homes with the consciousness of having performed your duty,—of deserving, if you do not receive, the protection of the law, and bearing with you the gratitude and respect of all honorable men. You have learned to suffer and to wait; but, in your hours of adversity, remember that the same God who has numbered the hairs of our heads, who watches over even the fate of a sparrow, is the God of your race as well as mine. The sweat-blood which the nation is now shedding at every pore is an awful warning of how fearful a thing it is to oppress the humblest being.”
A letter in “The Tribune,” dated Cincinnati, Sept. 7, giving an account of the enthusiasm of the people in rallying for the city’s defence, says, “While all have done well, the negroes, as a class, must bear away the palm. When martial law was declared, a few prominent colored men tendered their services in any capacity desired. As soon as it became known that they would be accepted, Mayor Hatch’s police commenced arresting them everywhere, dragging them away from their houses and places of business without a moment’s notice, shutting them up in negro-pens, and subjecting them to the grossest abuse and indignity. Mr. Hatch is charged with secession proclivities. During the recent riots against the negroes, the animus of his police was entirely hostile to them, and many outrages were committed upon that helpless and unoffending class. On this occasion, the same course was pursued. No opportunity was afforded the negro to volunteer; but they were treated as public enemies. They were taken over the river, ostensibly to work upon the fortification; but were scattered, detailed as cooks for white regiments, some of them half-starved, and all so much abused that it finally caused a great outcry. When Gen. Wallace’s attention was called to the matter, he requested Judge William M. Dickson, a prominent citizen, who is related by marriage to President Lincoln, to take the whole matter in charge. Judge Dickson undertook the thankless task: organized the negroes into two regiments of three hundred each, made the proper provision for their comfort, and set them at work upon the trenches. They have accomplished more than any other six hundred of the whole eight thousand men upon the fortifications. Their work has been entirely voluntary. Judge Dickson informed them at the outset that all could go home who chose; that it must be entirely a labor of love with them. Only one man of the whole number has availed himself of the privilege; the rest have all worked cheer, fully and efficiently. One of the regiments is officered by white captains, the other by negroes. The latter, proved so decidedly superior that both regiments will hereafter be commanded by officers of their own race. They are not only working, but drilling; and they already go through some of the simpler military movements very creditably.. Wherever they appear, they are cheered by our troops. Last night, one of the colored regiments, coming off duty for twenty-four hours, was halted in front of headquarters, at the Burnet House, front faced, and gave three rousing cheers for Gen. Wallace, and three more for Judge Dickson.”
CHAPTER XV. PROCLAMATION OF FREEDOM.
Emancipation Proclamation.—Copperhead View of It.—“Abraham Spare the South.”—The Contrabands Rejoicing.—The Songs.—Enthusiasm.—Faith in God.—Negro Wit.—“Forever Free.”
On the 22d of September, 1862, President Lincoln sent forth his proclamation, warning the rebel States that he would proclaim emancipation to their slaves if such States did not return to the Union before the first day of the following January. Loud were the denunciations of the copperheads of the country; and all the stale arguments against negro emancipation which had been used in the West Indies thirty years before, and since then in our country, were newly vamped, and put forward to frighten the President and his Cabinet.
The toleration of a great social wrong in any country is ever accompanied by blindness of vision, hardness of heart, and cowardice of mind, as well as moral deterioration and industrial impoverishment. Hence, whenever an earnest attempt is made for the removal of the wrong, those without eyes noisily declare that they see clearly that nothing but disastrous consequences will follow; those who are dead to all sensibility profess to be shocked beyond measure in contemplating the terrible scenes that must result from the change; and those who have no faith in justice are thrown into spasms at the mention of its impartial administration. For a whole generation, covering the period of the antislavery struggle in this country, have they not incessantly raised their senseless clamors and indignant outcries against the simplest claim of bleeding humanity to be released from its tortures, as though it were a proposition to destroy all order, inaugurate universal ruin, and “let chaos come again?”
“The proclamation won’t reach the slaves,” said one. “They wont heed it,” said another.
“This proclamation is an invitation to the blacks to murder their masters,” remarked a Boston copperhead newspaper. “The slaves will fight for their masters,” said the same journal, the following day.