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 Negroes in Our Army. 225

acts at every favorable opportunity; would prevent him from settling on our lands, and render the South a very unprofitable conquest. It would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause and place independence above every question of property.

The very magnitude of the sacrifice itself, such as no nation has ever voluntarily made before, would appall our enemies, destroy his spirit and his finances, and fill our hearts with a pride and singleness of purpose which would clothe us with new strength in battle.

NEED FOR FIGHTING MEN.

Apart from all other aspects of the question, the necessity for more fighting men is upon us. We can only get a sufficiency by making the negro share the dangers and hardships of the war. If we arm and train him and make him fight for the country in her hour of dire distress, every consideration of principle and policy demand that we should set him and his whole race who side with us, free. It is a first principle with mankind that he who offers his life in defense of the State should receive from her in return his freedom and his happiness, and we believe in acknowledgment of this principle the constitutions of the Southern States have reserved to their respec- tive governments the power to free slaves for meritorious services to the State. It is politic besides. For many years ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest in the field. The hope of freedom is, per- haps, the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his pres- ent condition. It would be preposterous, then, to expect him to fight against it with any degree of enthusiasm; therefore, we must bind him to our cause by no doubtful bonds; we must leave no pos- sible loophole for treachery to creep in. The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army they would be a thousandfold more dangerous. Therefore, when we make soldiers of them we must make freemen of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also. We can do this more effectually than the North can now do, for we can give the negro not only his own freedom, but that of his wife and child, and can secure it to him in his old home. To do this we must immediately make his mar- riage and parental relations sacred in the eyes of the law and forbid their sale. The past legislation of the South concedes that a large

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