In the beginning of the struggle few believed that the liberation of the slaves would be the outcome. And if it had not been for the obstinate perversity of the South the two sections of the country might have reached an agreement perpetuating slavery in the states in which it then existed and simply forbidding its extension into new territory. The North was perfectly willing that there should be a rehabilitation of the country with southern laws and southern institutions reacknowledged in their old form. But God was in this contest as well as man. He willed it otherwise. The war became so desperate that President Lincoln was forced to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as an imperative measure of self-defense. He did what he had always desired to do, but what he had been kept from doing by northern public opinion—an opinion which the exigencies of the situation had now revolutionized. This act was soon followed by the arming of colored men for duty as soldiers. No men ever sought more eagerly to fight for any cause than did the black men for the freedom which the Emancipation Proclamation promised. When the opportunity was given them to enlist, they joyfully accepted it, and as the loyal white men had cried two years before, so cried they, “We are coming, Father Abraham, Six hundred thousand strong.” On the brightest pages of the history of the Civil War are written the accounts of their splendid deeds of valor. Port Hudson, Milliken’s Bend, Olustee and Fort Wagner are names that will always be inseparably connected with their glorious achievements in battle. The records tell us that 178,975 colored soldiers took part in 213 battles and skirmishes, and that 36,847 of them lost their lives. Among the men honored by the Congress of the United States with medals for distinguished service in action during the Civil War are seventeen Negroes. The courage and the spirit of these men are shown in an occurrence which took place immediately after the desperate charge at Fort Wagner, where the sainted Shaw fell at the head of his black regiment. One of the officers went about among the wounded after the battle speaking to them words of encouragement. He finally came upon a large group of men and asked them: “If out of it and at home, how many of you would enlist again?” Every man replied, even the wounded, that he would, and that he would fight until the last brother should break his chains. “For if all our people get their freedom, we can afford to die”. The good and just Abraham Lincoln speaking of the part Negro soldiers bore in the war, paid them this tribute: “There are some Negroes living who can remember, and the children of some who are dead, who will not forget that some black men with steady eye and well poised bayonet helped mankind to save liberty in America.”