The announcement that a regiment of colored soldiers was to be raised in Massachusetts, created another sensation among the Copperheads, and no means were left unused to deter them from enlisting. An early prejudice was brought against the movement, owing to the fact that the commissioned officers were white, and no door was to be opened to the black man's elevation. Would colored men enlist under such restrictions? was a question asked in every circle. All admitted that they had no inducement, save that of a wish to aid in freeing their brethren of the south. Disfranchised in a majority of the free states, laboring under an inhuman and withering prejudice, shut out of the political, religious, and social associations of the nation, the black man's case was a hard one. In the past, every weapon that genius or ignorance could invent or command had been turned against him. Missiles had been hurled at his devoted head from every quarter. The pulpit, the platform, and the press, had all united against him. The statesman in the councils of the nation had lowered his standard in his attempts to dehumanize the negro; the scholar had forgotten his calling while turning aside to coin epithets against the race. All of this he would have to forget before he could accept the musket and the knapsack. Yet he did forget all, and in a few short days the Massachusetts fifty-fourth regiment stood before the country as another evidence of the black man's fidelity and patriotism. It is but simple justice to say of this regiment, that the adjutant general, on its departure for the seat of war, paid it the high compliment of being the most sober and well behaved, and of having cost less for its organization, than any regiment that had left the commonwealth, and that it was better drilled than all, except the twelfth. While the fifty-fourth, by its military skill and good order, was softening the hard hearts of the people north, the negro regiments of Louisiana were attracting attention by the boldness of their request to General Banks to be sent to the field of active duty, and to be put in the front of the fight. When New Orleans was captured by General Butler, he found there a regiment of colored men bearing the name of the "Native Guard." These men had been compelled to serve under the rebels; but when the latter left the city, the former refused to follow, and embraced the earliest opportunity to offer their services to the Union cause. They were at once accepted by General Butler, under the title of the first Louisiana regiment.