Page:The black man - his antecedents, his genius, and his achievements (IA blackmanantecede00browrich).pdf/307

 the majority, "Let the republic perish rather than see the nigger in uniform."

All this time, the black man was silently, yet steadily, creating an under-current, which was, at a later day, to carry him to the battle field. The heroic act of Tillman on the high seas, the "strategy" of Captain Small in taking the Planter past the guns of Sumter, and the reliable intelligence conveyed to the Union army by "intelligent contrabands,"—all tended to soften the negro hate, and to pave the way for justice. All honor to the "New York Tribune," for its noble defence of my race, and its advocacy of the black man's right to bear arms. The organization of negro regiments once begun by General Hunter, soon found favor with the more liberal portion of the northern people.

By and by, that brave, generous, and highly cultivated scholar, gentleman, and Christian, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, lent the influence of his name, and accepted an office in the first South Carolina regiment, made an excursion into the heart of slavery, met the rebels and defeated them with his negro soldiers, and reported through the public journals what he had witnessed of the black man's ability on the field of battle. Then the tide begun to turn.

The announcement that a regiment of colored soldiers was to be raised in Massachusetts, created another sensation among the Copperheads, and no means were left unused to deter them from enlisting. An early prejudice was brought against the movement, owing to the fact that the commissioned officers were white, and no door was to be opened to the black