of January, 1863. It did produce the hoped-for
results. The cause of the North was now placed
on a consistent foundation. It was made clear
that when the fight for nationality had reached a
successful termination, there was to be no further
national responsibility for the great crime against
civilisation. The management of the contrabands,
who were from week to week making their way into the
lines of the Northern armies, was simplified.
There was no further question of holding coloured
men subject to the possible claim of a possibly loyal
master. The work of organising coloured troops,
which had begun in Massachusetts some months earlier
in the year, was now pressed forward with some measure
of efficiency. Boston sent to the front the 54th
and 55th Massachusetts regiments composed of coloured
troops and led by such men as Shaw and Hallowell.
The first South Carolina coloured regiment was raised
and placed under the command of Colonel Higginson.
I had myself some experience in Louisiana with the
work of moulding plantation hands into disciplined
soldiers and I was surprised at the promptness of
the transformation. A contraband who made his
way into the camp from the old plantation with the
vague idea that he was going to secure freedom was
often in appearance but an unpromising specimen out
of which to make a soldier. He did not know how
to hold himself upright or to look the other man in
the face. His gait was shambly, his perceptions
dull. It was difficult for him either to hear
clearly, or to understand when heard, the word of
instruction or command. When, however, the plantation
rags had been disposed of and (possibly after a souse
in the Mississippi) the contraband had been put into
the blue uniform and had had the gun placed on his
shoulder, he developed at once from a “chattel”
to a man. He was still, for a time at least, clumsy
and shambly. The understanding of the word of
command did not come at once and his individual action,
if by any chance he should be left to act alone, was,
as a rule, less intelligent, less to be depended upon,
than that of the white man. But he stood up straight
in the garb of manhood, looked you fairly in the face,
showed by his expression that he was anxious for the
privilege of fighting for freedom and for citizenship,
and in Louisiana, and throughout the whole territory
of the War, every black regiment that came into engagement
showed that it could be depended upon. Before
the War was closed, some two hundred thousand negroes
had been brought into the ranks of the Federal army
and their service constituted a very valuable factor
in the final outcome of the campaigns. A battle
like that at Milliken’s Bend, Mississippi, inconsiderable
in regard to the numbers engaged, was of distinctive
importance in showing what the black man was able and
willing to do when brought under fire for the first
time. A coloured regiment made up of men who
only a few weeks before had been plantation hands,
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