These people were not always outcasts. Under the great Napoleon they were citizens of the French Empire. It was only when the flag of the free came to cover them that they were disfranchised; only when they were transferred to a republic that they lost their political rights. Hitherto they have held themselves aloof from the slaves, and particularly from the plantation negroes; have plumed themselves upon their French descent, and thus isolated from both races, have transferred to Paris an allegiance that was rejected at Washington. “But now,” as one of them very frankly said during the evening, “we see that our future is indissolubly bound up with that of the negro race in this country; and we have resolved to make common cause, and rise or fall with them. We have no rights which we can reckon safe while the same are denied to the fieldhands on the sugar plantations.” Among the negro men present were several who, whether in complexion, clothes or conversation, would never have been suspected in any mixed company at the North of being other than intelligent and polished ornaments of the Anglo-Saxon race. Mingled with these were others of darker hues, ranging down to mulattoes, and even darker still; and among them were several negro officers whose behavior Generals Butler and Banks had highly praised. A group of beautiful ladies, apparently white, was suddenly invaded by a quaint old chocolate-colored dame, with high bandana wound about her head, subscription-book in hand, and the most extraordinary squeaking tones, calling for the taking of shares in her raffle. She was the grandmother of two of the young ladies! Madame Mottier, a mulatto, or quadroon, in whose education I think Boston had some hand, seemed to be the inspiring divinity of the fair, to whom all looked for direction or advice. She is teacher in a colored school. By and by Mr. Pierre Soulé’s piano, under quadroon fingers, began a march, and manly voices—albeit not from Rebel throats—swelled the chorus. And so we left them: negroes raffling fans and picture-frames and sets of jewelry in the Soulé parlors; negroes selling ice-cream in the Soulé dining-room; negroes at his piano; negroes in his library; negroes swarming amid his shrubbery; and yet as handsome, as elegantly dressed, and in many respects almost as brilliant a party as he himself ever gathered beneath his hospitable roof. Remembering how eagerly they had been buying portraits of Mr. Lincoln, I could not fail to recall, as we drove back, what I had seen in a picture gallery during the day, where there were no obnoxious “niggers” about. A picture of Lincoln hung side by side with one of Wilkes Booth, and above the two was a large, handsomely finished portrait of Robert E. Lee! ----- Footnote 31: