owy waves of battle and thrilled
their souls with ecstatic peace. Old men who, like Samuel the prophet,
believing the ark of God in the hands of the Philistines, and were
ready to give up the ghost, felt that it was just the time to begin to
live. Husbands were transported with the thought of gathering to their
bosoms the wife that had been sold to the "nigger traders"; mothers
swooned under the tender touch of the thought of holding in loving
embrace the children who pined for their care; and young men and
maidens could only "think thanksgiving and weep gladness."

The slave-holder saw in this proclamation the handwriting upon the
walls of the institution of slavery. The brightness and revelry of his
banqueting halls were to be succeeded by gloom and sorrow. His riches,
consisting in human beings, were to disappear under the magic touch of
the instrument of freedom. The chattel was to be transformed into a
person, the person into a soldier, the soldier into a citizen--and
thus the Negro slave, like the crawling caterpillar, was to leave his
grovelling situation, and in new form, wing himself to the sublime
heights of free American citizenship!

The Negroes had a marvellous facility of communicating news to each
other. The proclamation, in spite of the precautions of the rebel
authorities, took to itself wings. It came to the plantation of weary
slaves as the glorious light of a new-born day. It flooded the hovels
of slaves with its golden light and rich promise of "_forever free_."
Like St. Paul the poor slaves could exclaim:

"In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in
watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by
long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love
unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the
armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by
honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers,
and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and,
behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet
alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having
nothing, and yet possessing all things."

And the significant name of Abraham--"father of the faithful"--was
pronounced by the Negroes with blessings, and mingled in their songs
of praise.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] Greeley, vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS SOLDIERS.

TH