“To me it seems that reason, prudence, and judgment, aided by the present signs of the times, would indicate that the available muscle, the bone and sinew of our 30,000 colored inhabitants of the city and county of Philadelphia should be encouraged in their (already manifest) patriotic efforts in preparing to sustain and defend the soil and interests of their native State.” HAMILCAR. From the Pine and Palm, June 22, 1861. MR. EDITOR: Since I last wrote you, on the subject of American revolution, and the manifest interest we have in the great issue now before the country, I have been incessantly laboring, with might and main, to carry out, or to propagate, by all practicable means, the policy therein indicated. Of course, I have not closed my eyes to the various objections raised by learned and tried friends of the enslaved and disfranchised colored Americans of these United States. Nay, on the contrary, I have read and pondered them all over and over again, and I think I gave them the consideration they merit. I do not advance these suggestions I am now about to make, (in continuation of the position I have maintained in my previous letter,) with any direct reference to any one of the opinions I have met differing from my own; but merely for the purpose of indicating to those who have been long acquainted with me and my most implacable hostility to the slave power, and all who could in any way sympathize with or apologize for the cruel system of tyranny in this country: and to let those of our rulers who expect our cöoperation know, and know in time, that while I am largely filled with patriotism and sympathy for the government, yet that government must be magnanimously generous to the poor and oppressed of this land, ere it can have my hearty and willing support; and until it can have it thus, it cannot have it at all, by no principle, nor by any rule of coercion or impressment that it might adopt in this direction. I think, indeed I know, I have made myself more thoroughly understood on this point by those in authority, both of the State and of the United States, than among our own people. Many of our people would be willing, after an act was passed, by which they were to be forced into the field, to do the work white men would have them do, _i. e._—shoot down the slaves and free colored population of the South, who might have no possible means of escaping the necessity of going into the service of the Southern Confederacy. As I remarked to a gentleman, a few days ago, it would take a degree of patriotism that I do not possess, to go South for such a purpose. I would readily go to shoot the enemies of the government; but until it was made manifest to me that these men were possessed of discretionary power, of their own will to act in the case as they felt disposed, I should not be willing to shoot them; nor