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The Slave Soldiers—Amongst there [sic] stupendous wrongs against humanity, shocking to the moral sense of the world, like Herod’s massacre of the Innocents, or the eve of St. Bartholomew, the crime of Lincoln in seducing our slaves into the ranks of his army will occupy a prominent position. All minor and local massacres pale before it. It would, if accomplished as intended, consign four millions of human beings to sure extermination. Loathsome as the character of Lincoln appears in other respects, in this it is pre-eminently hideous. The world has had its Neros, and great conquerors delighting in human blood. Never one has before times dared the bloody height of wheedling millions of harmless, happy and innocent people to destruction by bloody death, or sure starvation, and laughed at their calamities. It towers aloft the acme of crime. The work is in progress, and has been partly accomplished. Thousands of souls of this unhappy race, have already been flown from the crowded Lazar houses of the North, from bodies starved and frozen in their inhospitable clime, from carcasses weltering in their gore upon battle fields, where they have been coldly and heartlessly exposed to slaughter, and stand at Heaven’s chancery with the black and damning accusation against the author of their ruin. Will it not be. “When they do meet at court. This look of theirs will hurl his soul from heaven, And fiends will snatch at it.” God knows! We must not judge lest we be judged. But on earth he is most foul and horrible. It is the curse of evil that its effects are not confined to authors and victims. We to are drawn unwillingly into the vortex of its consequences, and may be compelled to courses which may wring our hearts with pity. A great problem is forced upon us. The most important ever presented in the history of international law. We cannot shut our eyes and pass it by. It cries aloud for solution, and that at once. No delay is possible, or worse and more terrible complications will surely follow. How shall we treat our slaves arrayed under the banners of the invader, and marching to desolate our homes and firesides? Who can answer that flippantly? We do not envy such a man. It is a case in which it well becomes our rulers to pray most earnestly for Divine guidance. May they have it soon! Meanwhile the problem has met our soldiers in the heat of battle, where there has been no time for discussion. They have cut the Gordian knot with the sword. They did right. It was not theirs to untangle its knotty folds. It is far better for the deluded victims, and for us, that the fate which may perhaps be considered inevitable, should come upon them in hot blood, and the excitement of the battlefield. But it is
nevertheless of the
most pressing importance that our Government should adopt some
system in the
treatment of these unfortunates, well defined to ourselves and
made known to
the enemy in order to be prepared to meet its consequences. That we may make no
retractions, nor betray
fatal vacillation, it is indispensable to be right. Without firmness we cannot
succeed. To be firm we
must be conscientiously
right. Let us calmly
examine the
principles which apply, and as far as may be, reconcile humanity
with the
safety of those institutions upon which our Government rests. All the time remembering,
that the loftiest
humanity dictates the preservation of our Government, and the
happiness and
welfare of its citizens, at any cost however terrible.
Independently of the fact, that slavery under our Constitution is the normal and proper condition of the African races, we would not, under the law of nations, object to the enlistment of free blacks in the enemy's ranks, or refuse to treat them as prisoners of war. No nation, generally, has the right to dictate to a hostile power the race or color of its soldiers. But the existence of slavery with us, fixes the status of the African as inferior and subordinate, and precludes us from extending to the free negro any consideration above what is paid to our slaves. We have the right to require of all belligerants of every nation such consideration of our peculiar institution as not to force upon us, as soldiers and equals, persons of a race whom we cannot recognize as such without an abandonment of principle. The whole foundation of our social system rests upon the subordination and respect of our slaves, which can never be preserved if their fellows, persons of the same race and color, are allowed the haughty privilege of entering our houses, arresting, and commanding us as prisoners of war. It is an intentional insult upon the part of any belligerent, to send such amongst us. The case of the freed negro must rest upon the same basis as that of the slave, and he must share his fate, whatever that may be. |