When, still later, General Hunter
attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not
yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March and May
and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border
States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable
necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come
unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I
was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either
surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying
strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter."
XXV
Negro Soldiers--Fort Pillow--Retaliation--Draft--Northern
Democrats--Governor Seymour's Attitude--Draft Riots in New
York--Vallandigham--Lincoln on his Authority to Suspend Writ of Habeas
Corpus--Knights of the Golden Circle--Jacob Thompson in Canada
On the subject of negro soldiers, as on many other topics, the period of
active rebellion and civil war had wrought a profound change in public
opinion. From the foundation of the government to the Rebellion, the
horrible nightmare of a possible slave insurrection had brooded over the
entire South. This feeling naturally had a sympathetic reflection in the
North, and at first produced an instinctive shrinking from any thought
of placing arms in the hands of the blacks whom the chances of war had
given practical or legal freedom.
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