and pregnant theme for some future chapters.
At present our business is with the slow but certain growth
in the public mind of this idea of allowing some black men
to be killed in the late war, and not continuing to arrogate
death and mutilation by projectiles and bayonets as an
exclusive privilege for our own beloved white race.

"No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this special duty
at Washington, than he was ordered back to the South, our
Government still taking no notice of the order of outlawry
against him issued by the rebel Secretary of War. He and his
officers were thus sent back to engage, with extremely
insufficient forces, in an enterprise of no common
difficulty, and with an agreeable sentence of _sus. per
col._, if captured, hanging over their devoted heads!

"Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General, that he should
either demand the special revocation of that order, or
announce to the rebel War Department that our Government has
adopted your negro-regiment policy as its own--which would
be the same thing.

"It was partly on this hint that Hunter wrote the following
letter to Jefferson Davis,--a letter subsequently suppressed
and never sent, owing to influences which the writer of this
article does not feel himself as yet at liberty to
reveal,--further than to say that Mr. Stanton knew nothing
of the matter. Davis and Hunter, we may add, had been very
old and intimate friends, until divided, some years previous
to our late war, by differences on the slavery question.
Davis had for many years been adjutant of the 1st U. S.
Dragoons, of which Hunter had been Captain Commanding; and a
relationship of very close friendship had existed between
their respective families. It was this thorough knowledge of
his man, perhaps, which gave peculiar bitterness to Hunter's
pen; and the letter is otherwise remarkable as a prophecy,
or preordainment of that precise policy which Pres't.
Johnson has so frequently announced, and reiterated since
Mr. Lincoln's death. It ran--with some few omissions, no
longer pertinent or of public interest--as follows:

"TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, TITULAR PRESIDENT OF THE SO-CALLED
CONFEDERATE STATES.

"SIR:--While recently in command of the Department of the
South, in accordance with the law