Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/268

234 loyalty was sound. It brought every man down to his true level. It made the negro a fighting patriot, and it made the pro-slavery peace Democrat a skulking Tory. It added two hundred thousand black soldiers to our armies, and it increases their number daily.

I wish to call your special attention to this point. I will not discuss the soldierly qualities of the negro. Although on many bloody fields he has proved them, and although I consider a black man fighting for his own and our liberty far superior, as a soldier, to a white man who dodges a fight against slavery, yet, for argument's sake, I am willing to suppose that the negro soldier is best to be used as a garrison and guard soldier on our immense lines of railroads, in fortified places and posts. This, not even our opponents will deny. But do they not see that, in using him thus, we can release so many white veterans from such duty and send them forward to the battlefield? Do they not see that only in this way it becomes possible to effect those formidable concentrations of military power, and thus to achieve those glorious results, which have made the rebellion reel and the hearts of the Northern traitors quake? Do they not see that, while it may not be the negro who beats the enemy on the battlefield, it is more than doubtful whether, without the negro reinforcements, we could hurl such strength against the enemy as makes victory sure? No wonder that there are opposed to the negro soldiers those whose cheeks grew pale when they heard of the taking of Atlanta, and of Sheridan whirling the rebels out of the Valley of Virginia.

The emancipation proclamation, I say, added two hundred thousand black soldiers to our armies, and it may indeed have kept some white ones away, who merely wanted an excuse for not going anyhow. They say a white soldier cannot fight by the side of the negro. I know of white soldiers who were very glad to see the