tion in Congress, even as regards the
future pay of colored soldiers,--and that there is especial danger of
the whole matter of _arrears_ going by default Should it be so, it
will be a repudiation more ungenerous than any which Jefferson Davis
advocated or Sydney Smith denounced. It will sully with dishonor all
the nobleness of this opening page of history, and fix upon the North
a brand of meanness worse than either Southerner or Englishman has yet
dared to impute. The mere delay in the fulfillment of this contract has
already inflicted untold suffering, has impaired discipline, has relaxed
loyalty, and has begun to implant a feeling of sullen distrust in the
very regiments whose early career solved the problem of the nation,
created a new army, and made peaceful emancipation possible.

T. W. HIGGINSON, Colonel commanding 1st S. C. Vols.

BEAUFORT, S. C., January 22, 1864.

HEADQUARTERS FIRST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS, BEAUFORT, S. C., Sunday,
February 14, 1864.

To the Editor of the _New York Times_:

May I venture to call your attention to the great and cruel injustice
which is impending over the brave men of this regiment?

They have been in military service for over a year, having volunteered,
every man, without a cent of bounty, on the written pledge of the War
Department that they should receive the same pay and rations with white
soldiers.

This pledge is contained in the written instructions of
Brigadier-General Saxton, Military Governor, dated August 25, 1862. Mr.
Solicitor Whiting, having examined those instructions, admits to me that
"the faith of the Government was thereby pledged to every officer and
soldier under that call."

Surely, if this fact were understood, every man in the nation would see
that the Government is degraded by using for a year the services of the
brave soldiers, and then repudiating the contract under which they
were enlisted. This is what will be done, should Mr. Wilson's bill,
legalizing the back pay of the army, be defeated.

We presume too much on the supposed ignorance of these men. I have never
yet found a man in my regiment so stupid as not to know when he was
cheated. If fraud proceeds from Government itself, so much the worse,
for this strikes at the foundation of all rectitude, all honor, all
obligation.

Mr. Senator Fessenden said, in the debate on Mr. Wilson's bill, January
4, that the Government was not bound by the unauthorized promises of
irresponsible