Letters and Discussions on the Formation of Colored Regiments,: and the Duty of the Colored People in Regard to the Great Slaveholders' Rebellion, in the United States of AmericaGreen, Alfred M.
History
Letters and Discussions on the Formation of Colored Regiments,: and the Duty of the Colored People in Regard to the Great Slaveholders' Rebellion, in the United States of America
Green, Alfred M.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Participation, African American
The South (as I have said in an article written for the Philadelphia
“Press,” and copied into several popular journals) can mean nothing less
than emancipation, by the act of her having thousands of free colored
men, as well as slaves, even now under the best military discipline.
England and France of course would favor such a project, should the
South thus snatch the key to a termination of this rebellion from the
hands of the Federal Government. But how much better off would we be,
sitting here like Egyptian mummies, till all this was done, and then
drafted and driven off, undisciplined, to meet well-disciplined troops,
who will then truly be fighting for freedom; and while we could have no
other motive than to help conquer a peace for the “_Union still_” in its
perfidious unregenerate state? Tell me not that it will be optional with
us, in the event of emancipation by the South, whether we fight or not.
On the contrary, there is no possible way to escape it but to either
commit suicide or run away to Africa, for even the climate of Canada, in
such an event, would not be cool enough to check the ardor of fighting
abolitionists against the hell-born prejudice of the North, and the
cowardly black man, would sit here quietly with his arms folded, instead
of taking advantage of the times, till even the emancipated slaves of the
South, rigorous in their majesty, force him to rise and flee to Canada
to save his unsavory bacon. Let us then, sir, hear no more of these
measures of actual necessity inaugurating a “dilemma, inviting enmity,
and destruction to the few, both North and South, among our people
enjoying partial freedom.” That is a work that cannot be accomplished
by loyal patriotic efforts to prepare a hundred thousand men to do
service for God, for freedom, for themselves. Sitting still, shirking the
responsibility God has thrown upon our shoulders, alone can engender such
a dilemma.
Your correspondent also asks whether: “Once under army discipline,
subject to the control of the government officers or military orders,
we could dictate when and where the blow should be struck. Could we
enter upon Quixotic crusades of our own projecting, independent of the
constituted authorities or these military chiefs?” Sir, it appears to me
that, under whatever changes of governmental policy, our favor would be
courted more under such circumstances, and our dictation received with
more favor and regard, both by the authorities, chiefs, and the people
at large, than by our weak, effeminate pleadings for favor on the merits
of our noble ancestry, rather than nerving our own arms and hearts for a
combat that we have long half-heartedly invited by our much groanings and
pleadings at a throne of grace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Letters and Discussions on the Formation of Colored Regiments,: and the Duty of the Colored People in Regard to the Great Slaveholders' Rebellion, in the United States of America — John Shaqi
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