"When the applause that had greeted his appearance had somewhat died down, Captain Lincoln went on to say, ’Ladies and Gentlemen, such a night as this makes up for all I have suffered in the cause of the Union and Freedom. When I first entered the army to assist in putting down the rebellion, I came down to the State of Louisiana and did my level best against the enemy along the lower Mississippi. While we in Louisiana and the colored troops in South Carolina under General Hunter, proved from our first blows that we could and would fight, the President and his Cabinet were deterred by many prejudiced men in the north and in the very army itself from enlisting colored men. A portion of the northern press were forever thundering against the enlistment of colored men, on account of the prejudice against the color of the skin, or at least against the inheritance of a few drops of African blood. They were envious and jealous lest the descendant of African parentage should fall side by side with the fair-skinned Caucasian, should die and be buried with him, or if he survived the shock of war, should receive the self-same honors as his Anglo-Saxon brother. Of course the white man of the north knew that we could fight quite as well as himself. Why not? But he was afraid of our proving that our claims to manhood were as good as anything he could claim for himself; and therefore he felt unwilling to give us a chance. Then again, not only did the slave-holders of the south desire the continuation of slavery, but there was an ’immense mixed multitude’ of their sympathizers north of Mason and Dixon’s Line, who took the same view of the situation, and who foresaw that, once the colored race marched to the field, slavery would come to an end. This opposition was rampant in the Union Army and throughout the north till the Southrons had given us dozens, if not hundreds of lickings on many a hard fought field, and the winter of 1862 saw the entire nation in a fearful state of depression. What was to be done?—The answer was at hand!—As a matter of immediate military necessity call the colored men into the field,—free them,—and end the war! Then drilling of colored men began at once, from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and now I believe that we have some two hundred thousand colored men in the field and in the fleets together. Neither have we fought for pay nor from any other personal selfish motive; we have fought for the salvation of Uncle Sam and the freedom of the slave at one and the same time. We have not fought for ourselves alone, we have fought for others, and all the commanding generals have ever given us a good word, and never a bad one. They have uniformly praised our men with a good grace, and praised them without stint. Now the south is steadily going down, down, down. All they have left is a small section in the northeastern part of the