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Depot of supplies at Cedar Level, Virginia; and Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia.

given him as a reward for services to his country; and the very assumption of his capacity and fidelity in this service was the best argument that could be presented to show the injustice and oppression, and crime of slavery. If the negro was fit to be a soldier, he was not fit to be a slave. If his freedom was to be offered as a reward, then it was a desideratum, a boon-it was a better state-a natural good of which the laws of the South had deprived him. Now this was the whole theory of the Abolitionists; and the world found it subscribed to, in circumstances which might be thought to compel sincerity-in what might be easily construed as an honest confession in a season of affliction and misfortune— by no less a person than Jefferson Davis.

"For three months Congress labored in debate and had convulsive intercourse with the president; and the birth was a bill passed not until the 7th of March, 1865-not much more than three weeks before the fall of Richmond-that brought the whole matter to an impotent and ridiculous conclusion. The law, as finally enacted, was merely to authorize the president to receive into the military service such ablebodied slaves as might be patriotically tendered by their masters to be employed in whatever capacity he might direct; no change to be made in the relation of owners of slaves, at least so far as appeared in the bill. The fruit of this emasculated measure was two companies of blacks organized from some negro vagabonds in Richmond, who were allowed to give balls at the Libby Prison and were exhibited in fine, fresh uniforms on Capitol Square, as decoys to obtain sable recruits. But the mass of their colored brethren looked on the parade with unenvious eyes, and little boys exhibited the early prejudices of race by pelting the fine uniforms with mud. The paltriness of the law referred to, was a stock of ridicule and the occasion of a new contempt for Congress. It was seriously interesting only as showing that vague desperation in the Confederacy which caught at straws; and indication of the want of nerve in it to make a practical and distinct effort for safety;

and a specimen of those absurdly small laws of Congress, measured with reference to the necessities for which legislation was invoked."

Meanwhile the negro soldiers in the National armies were winning victories for freedom. The military correspondence of the commanders in the field remains a testimony to their confidence in the capacity and fidelity of the black regiments. No single act of Lincoln's administration equally prepared the nation to consider without prejudice the grave problem of the enfranchisement of the negro, which from the time of the appearance of the negro as an efficient soldier was bound sooner or later to arise. Pollard expresses the new situation in an epigram: "If the negro was fit to be a soldier, he was not fit to be a slave."

Northern opinion of this proposed transformation of the slave into the Confederate soldier was expressed by Lincoln, in the course of an address to an Indiana regiment, March 17, 1865:

"There are but few aspects of this great war on which I have not already expressed my views by speaking or writing. There is one-the recent effort of 'our erring brethren' sometimes so-called, to employ the slaves in their armies. The great question with them has been: 'Will the negro fight for them?' They ought to know better than we, and doubtless do know better than we. I may incidentally remark, that having in my life heard many arguments or strings of words meant to pass for arguments-intended to show that the negro ought to be a slave -if he shall now really fight to keep himself a slave, it will be a far better argument, why he should remain a slave than I have ever before heard. He, perhaps, ought to be a slave if he desires it ardently enough to fight for it. Or, if one out of four will, for his own freedom, fight to keep the other three in slavery, he ought to be a slave for his selfish meanness. I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire

it for others. Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. There is one thing about the negro's fighting for the rebels which we can know as well as they can, and that is that they cannot at the same time fight in their armies and stay at home and make bread for them. And this being known and remembered, we can have but little concern whether they become soldiers or not. I am rather in favor of the measure, and would at any time, if I could, have loaned them a vote to carry it. We have to reach the bottom of the insurgent resources; and that they employ, or seriously think of employing, the slaves as soldiers, gives us glimpses of the bottom. Therefore I am glad of what we learn on this subject."

This account of negro troops has extended somewhat beyond the date of the third year of the war, but it has seemed justifiable to bring the subject and its consequences together: for from the time that Lincoln advocated the arming of negro soldiers, the issues involved were under consideration in the Northern mind. That that mind would entertain so novel a proposition is in itself evidence that the traditional state of mind South and North was changing: and this change, in all its aspects, constitutes the cause, the course and the effect of the Civil War.

While the Nation had been vindicating its principles at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and the president had uttered the slowly formed judgment of the North in the Emancipation Proclamation, public opinion in England had been shown by the utterances of the members of the government. At no time outspoken in favor of the North, and thus far leaving no opportunity unseized for eulogy of the Confederacy, the English press, after the defeat of Pope at Bull Run, reviewed the situation as conclusive proof of the speedy ruin of the Federal cause and the permanent disruption of the Union. Lord Palmerston, the premier, was considering the probability of a conjoint interference, by England, France and Russia, which should bring the war to an end.

Of the exact nature of the queen's utterances at this time, there is apparently no record as yet accessible to historians, but she was credited by the North as favorable to the National cause, and the tradition prevails in America to-day that to her wise and just judgment must be attributed the ultimate policy of non-interference and neutrality which the British government pursued. There is no evidence, on the other hand, that either Lord Palmerston, or Earl Russell or Lord Granville, or Mr. Gladstone, the chancellor of the exchequer, believed that the North would prevent the disruption of the Union. Gladstone, speaking at Newcastle, October 7, 1862, declared: "There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made, what is more than either-they have made a nation." And he added: "We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as their separation from the North is concerned."

England did not misunderstand the meaning of these words, and Adams, the American minister, declared, that if they expressed the views of the Cabinet, his term as American minister was likely to be very short. There is ample evidence that Gladstone did utter the sentiments of the members of the Cabinet, but not, technically, of the Cabinet itself, or diplomatic relations between England and the United States must have shortly ceased. But immediately, from the completion of his speech, Gladstone was addressed and interviewed as to the meaning of his words, and he straightway began that dialectical explanation of them which might mean anything or nothing as circumstances might demand. The speech simply shows how little the chancellor of the exchequer understood the issue in America-or, with what slight devotion to the principles of liberty he could indirectly advise the suppression of those principles. The cotton famine in England was the political fulcrum by which opinion there moved the minds of the ministry. And yet, the warmest friends of the American

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