rew Jackson, fight with colored
battalions whom he had summoned to the field, and whom he
thanked publicly for their gallantry in hurling back a
British foe? It is all talk, idle talk, to say that the
volunteers who are fighting the battles of this country are
governed by any such narrow prejudice or bigotry. These
prejudices are the results of the teachings of demagogues
and politicians, who have for years undertaken to delude and
deceive the American people, and to demean and degrade
them."

Mr. Grimes had expressed his views a few weeks before, and
desired a vote separately on each of these sections. Mr.
Davis declared that he was utterly opposed, and should ever
be opposed, to placing arms in the hands of negroes, and
putting them into the army. Mr. Rice wished "to know if Gen.
Washington did not put arms into the hands of negroes, and
if Gen. Jackson did not, and if the senator has ever
condemned either of those patriots for doing so." "I deny,"
replied Mr. Davis, "that, in the Revolutionary War, there
ever was any considerable organization of negroes. I deny,
that, in the war of 1812, there was ever any organization of
negro slaves. * * * In my own State, I have no doubt that
there are from eighty to a hundred thousand slaves that
belong to disloyal men. You propose to place arms in the
hands of the men and boys, or such of them as are able to
handle arms, and to manumit the whole mass, men, women, and
children, and leave them among us. Do you expect us to give
our sanction and our approval to these things? No, no! We
would regard their authors as our worst enemies; and there
is no foreign despotism that could come to our rescue, that
we would not joyously embrace, before we would submit to
any such condition of things as that. But, before we had
invoked this foreign despotism, we would arm every man and
boy that we have in the land, and we would meet you in a
death-struggle, to overthrow together such an oppression and
our oppressors." Mr. Rice remarked in reply to Mr. Davis,
"The rebels hesitate at nothing. There are no means that God
or the Devil has given them that they do not use. The
honorable senator said that the negroes might be useful in
loading and swabbing and firing cannon. If that be the case,
may no