h
cheerfulness and alacrity. * * * In the organization of this
regiment I have labored under difficulties which might have
discouraged one who had less faith in the wisdom of the measure;
but I am glad to report that the experiment is a complete
success. My belief is that when we get a footing on the mainland
regiments may be raised which will do more than any now in the
service to put an end to this rebellion.'

"We are learning slowly, very slowly, in this war to use the
means of success which lie ready to our hands. We have learnt at
last that the negro is essential to our success, but we are still
hesitating whether to allow him to do all he can or only a part.

"It will not take many such proofs as this black regiment now
offers to convince us of the full value of our new allies. But we
ought to go beyond that selfishness which regards only our own
necessities and remember that the negro has a right to fight for
his freedom, and that he will be all the more fit to enjoy his
new destiny by helping to achieve it."

On the 28th of March, 1863, Mr. Greeley sent forth the following able
and sensible editorial on the Negro as a soldier:

"NEGRO TROOPS.

"Facts are beginning to dispel prejudices. Enemies of the negro
race, who have persistently denied the capacity and doubted the
courage of the Blacks, are unanswerably confuted by the good
conduct and gallant deeds of the men whom they persecute and
slander. From many quarters come evidence of the swiftly
approaching success which is to crown what is still by some
persons deemed to be the experiment of arming whom the
Proclamation of Freedom liberates.

"The 1st and 2d South Carolina Volunteers, under Colonels
Higginson and Montgomery, have ascended the St. John's River in
Florida as far as Jacksonville, and have re-occupied that
important town which was once before taken and afterward
abandoned by the Union forces. Many of the negroes composing
these regiments had been slaves in this very place. Their memory
of old wrongs, of the privations, outrages and tortures of
Slavery, must here, if anywhere, have been fresh and vivid, and
the passions which opportunity for just revenges stimulates even
in white breasts, ought to have been roused more than in all
other p