Page:The black man - his antecedents, his genius, and his achievements (IA blackmanantecede00browrich).pdf/308

 man's elevation. Would colored men enlist under such restrictions? was a question asked in every circle. All admitted that they had no inducement, save that of a wish to aid in freeing their brethren of the south.

Disfranchised in a majority of the free states, laboring under an inhuman and withering prejudice, shut out of the political, religious, and social associations of the nation, the black man's case was a hard one. In the past, every weapon that genius or ignorance could invent or command had been turned against him. Missiles had been hurled at his devoted head from every quarter.

The pulpit, the platform, and the press, had all united against him. The statesman in the councils of the nation had lowered his standard in his attempts to dehumanize the negro; the scholar had forgotten his calling while turning aside to coin epithets against the race. All of this he would have to forget before he could accept the musket and the knapsack. Yet he did forget all, and in a few short days the Massachusetts fifty-fourth regiment stood before the country as another evidence of the black man's fidelity and patriotism. It is but simple justice to say of this regiment, that the adjutant general, on its departure for the seat of war, paid it the high compliment of being the most sober and well behaved, and of having cost less for its organization, than any regiment that had left the commonwealth, and that it was better drilled than all, except the twelfth. While the fifty-fourth, by its military skill and good order, was softening the hard hearts of the people north, the negro regiments of Louisiana were attracting attention by the bold