ending and acquiring Union territory.
The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be
disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring
them to slavery. The black men who now assist Union
prisoners to escape, they are to be converted into our
enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good will of their
masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one.
You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them
ultimate success; and the experience of the present war
proves their success is inevitable if you fling the
compulsory labor of millions of black men into their side of
the scale. Will you give our enemies such military
advantages as insure success, and then depend on coaxing,
flattery, and concession to get them back into the Union?
Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men; take two
hundred thousand men from our side and put them in the
battle-field or cornfield against us, and we would be
compelled to abandon the war in three weeks. We have to hold
territory in inclement and sickly places; where are the
Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field
was open to the war Democrats to put down this rebellion by
fighting against both master and slave, long before the
present policy was inaugurated. There have been men base
enough to propose to me to return to slavery the black
warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the
respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should
deserve to be dammed in time and eternity. Come what will, I
will keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I
am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of
abolition. So long as I am President, it shall be carried on
for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human
power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the
emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to
weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.
Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men raised on
southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has
subtracted from the enemy; and instead of alienating the
South, there are now evidences of a fraternal feeling
growing up between our men and the rank and file of the
rebel soldiers. Let my enemies prove to the country that the