It was not long before the fame of the colored soldiers of America was wafted over the whole world, and was everywhere received by all lovers of freedom with most hearty applause. All, excepting those who believed in keeping other people down, heard the news with the greatest of pleasure. Many of the aristocrats of England, France and elsewhere, who had made investments in Confederate bonds, and sympathized with the South from the beginning, had no joy when they learned how Uncle Sam had turned a new element of strength into the field; but the common people everywhere all the world over, who had read "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" in all the principal languages of the earth, and opposed the recognition of the Southern Confederacy from the first on account of slavery, rejoiced to hear that the Great North had at last turned over a new leaf, and brought the heroic sons of Africa into the field. It was a military necessity, of course; the nation was forced to do it; but all the same it was a matter of justice, and the right thing to do. Now the entire Christian world took ten times more interest in the war than before. They had been praying and often working in the interest of the American slave; and now they were delighted to hear of the self-same slave marching bravely to the field, and assisting white men in knocking the fetters off the whole race. Now, indeed, the scales began to turn in favor of the North, along the whole line. Before the first of January, 1863, it was as if there were eight pounds in the Northern scale, and eight pounds in the Southern scale, but now we throw in 200,000 colored men or more into the Northern scale, when the Southern end of the beam flies up as the lighter weight, and it becomes clear to the obtusest mind that the South is doomed, and domestic slavery with it also. CHAPTER VI. _Great Service of the Colored Race—Heroic Colored Women—Attack on Fort Wagner, 18th July, 1863—The ex-Slaves go to School—The Freedman’s Bureau—The Jubilee Minstrels—A Long Letter From Mr. Thomas Lincoln, Describing His Life in a New Orleans Hospital—The Mississippi River, and the Fight at Pleasant Grove in the Red River Expedition._