President shall prescribe; and,
after conviction, the President may commute the punishment in
such manner and on such terms as he may deem proper.

"SEC. 7. All negroes and mulattoes who shall be engaged in war,
or be taken in arms against the Confederate States, or shall give
aid or comfort to the enemies of the Confederate States, shall,
when captured in the Confederate States, be delivered to the
authorities of the State or States in which they shall be
captured, to be dealt with according to the present or future
laws of such State or States."

This document stands alone among the resolves of the civilized
governments of all Christendom. White persons acting as commissioned
officers in organizations of Colored Troops were to "be put to death!"
And all Negroes and Mulattoes taken in arms against the Confederate
Government were to be turned over to the authorities:--civil, of
course--of the States in which they should be captured, to be dealt
with according to the present or future laws of such States! Now, what
were the laws of the Southern States respecting Negroes in arms
against white people? The most cruel death. And fearing some of those
States had modified their cruel slave Code, the States were granted
the right to pass _ex post facto_ laws in order to give the
cold-blooded murder of captured Negro soldiers the semblance of
law,--and by a _civil law_ too. Colored soldiers and their officers
had been butchered before this in South Carolina, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Florida, notwithstanding the rebels were the first to
arm Negroes, as has been already shown. If the Confederates had a
right to arm Negroes and include them in their armies, why could not
the Federal Government pursue the same policy? But the Rebel
Government had determined upon a barbarous policy in dealing with
captured Negro soldiers,--and barbarous as that policy was, the rebel
soldiers exceeded its cruel provisions tenfold. Their treatment of
Negroes was perfectly fiendish.

But what was the attitude of the Federal Government? Silence, until
the butcheries of its gallant defenders had sickened the civilized
world, and until the Christian governments of Europe frowned upon the
inhuman indifference of the Government that would _force_ its slaves
to fight its battles and then allow them to be tortured to death in
the name of "_State laws_!" Even the most conservative papers of the
North began to