ster had fought; that in large districts,
unprotected by our troops, and with a white population,
consisting almost exclusively of women and children, the
slave had continued his work, quiet, faithful, and cheerful;
and that, as a conservative element in our social system,
the institution of slavery had withstood the shocks of war,
and been a faithful ally of our army, although instigated to
revolution by every art of the enemy, and prompted to the
work of assassination and pillage by the most brutal
examples of the Yankee soldiers."

With this view, the whole slave population was brought to the assistance
of the Confederate Government, and thereby caught the very first hope of
freedom. An innate reasoning taught the negro that slaves could not be
relied upon to fight for their own enslavement. To get to the
breastworks was but to get a chance to run to the Yankees; and thousands
of those whose elastic step kept time with the martial strains of the
drum and fife, as they marched on through city and town, enroute to the
front, were not elated with the hope of Southern success, but were
buoyant with the prospects of reaching the North. The confederates found
it no easy task to watch the negroes and the Yankees too; their
attention could be given to but one at a time; as a slave expressed it,
"when marsa watch the Yankee, nigger go; when marsa watch the nigger,
Yankee come." But the Yankees did not always receive him kindly during
the first year of the war.

In his first inaugural, Mr. Lincoln declared "that the property, peace
and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the new
incoming administration." The Union generals, except Fremont and Phelps
and a few subordinates, accepted this as public opinion, and as their
guide in dealing with the slavery question. That opinion is better
expressed in the doggerel, sung in after months by the negro troops as
they marched along through Dixie:

"McClellan went to Richmond with two hundred thousand braves,
He said, '_keep back the niggers and the Union he would save_.'
Little Mac. he had his way, still the Union is in tears,
And they call for the help of the colored volunteers."

The first two lines expressed the sentiment at the time, not only of the
Army of the Potomoc, but the army commanders everywhere, with the
exceptions named. The administration winked at the enforcement of the
fugitive slav