laces on the spot where they had suffered.

"If, then, Jacksonville were to-day in ashes, and the ghastly
spirit visions of '_The World_' materialized into terrible
realities, the negro haters would have no, cause to be
disappointed. '_The World_' hailed the alleged repulse and
massacre of the negroes and white officers--a report which it
invented outright, in sheer malignity, in order to forestall
public opinion by creating a belief in the failure of the
expedition--would have changed into agonized shrieks over the
outrages on its Southern brethren. The experiment of subjecting
negroes to military rules and accustoming them to those amenities
of civilized warfare which the rebels so uniformly practice would
again have been declared to be a hopeless failure; and for the
hundredth time the Proclamation and the radicals who advised it
would have been pilloried for public execration.

"Since, however, the contrary of all this is true, it may be
presumed by a confiding public which does not read it that '_The
World_' has honestly acknowledged the injustice of its slanders.
It is unpleasant to disabuse a confiding public on any subject,
but we who are sometimes obliged to look at that paper as a
professional duty, regret to say that we have not discovered a
single evidence of its repentance. The facts are, however, that
Colonel Higginson's men landed quietly at Jacksonville, marched
through its streets in perfect order, committed no outrages or
excesses of any kind, and by the testimony of all witnesses
conducted themselves with a military decorum and perfect
discipline which is far from common among white regiments in
similar circumstances. They have gone before this time still
further into the interior, and will doubtless do good service in
a direction where their presence has been least expected by the
Rebels. In the only instance in which the white chivalry ventured
to make a stand against them, the whites were defeated and driven
off the field by the Blacks.

"The truth is that the fitness of negroes to be soldiers has long
since, in this country and elsewhere, been amply demonstrated,
and the success of Col. Higginson's Black Troops is no matter of
surprise to any person tolerably well informed about the history
of the race. If it wer