00 negroes--5,000 at least of which fought for
the Union.--have been driven by persecution into Kansas from the
Southern States, and the exodus still continues.

[25] "Colonel Crawford ordered the prisoners to be taken to the rear
without insult or injury, which conduct on his part is in striking
contrast to the treatment bestowed upon our colored troops at Poison
Springs. He also told a rebel lieutenant and other prisoners to inform
their commanding General that colored troops had captured them, and that
he must from necessity leave some of his wounded men in hospitals by the
way, and that he should expect the same kind treatment shown to them
that he showed to those falling into his hands; but that just such
treatment as his wounded men received at their hands, whether kindness
or death, should from this time forward, be meted out to all rebel
falling into his hands. That if they wished to treat as prisoners of war
our colored soldiers, to be exchanged for theirs, the decision was their
own; but if they could afford to murder our colored prisoners to gratify
their fiendish dispositions and passions, the responsibility of
commensurate retaliation, to bring them to a sense of justice, was also
their own. But, notwithstanding the kindness shown to their prisoners,
so soon as our command left, a Texas soldier, in the presence of one of
their officers, killed, in the hospital, nine of the wounded men
belonging to the 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry."--_McAfee's Military
History of Kansas._

[26] About the middle of October, Colonel Crawford received information
of his nomination for the office of Governor, and came from Fort Smith
to Kansas, arriving about the 20th instant, just in time to be an active
participant in the expulsion of General Price and his army from the
border of the State.

CHAPTER VII.

DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH.

The appearance of the negro in the Union army altered the state of
affairs very much. The policy of the general Government was changed, and
the one question which Mr. Lincoln had tried to avoid became _the_
question of the war. General Butler, first at Fortress Monroe and then
at New Orleans, had defined the status of the slave, "contraband" and
then "soldiers," in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation. General
Hunter, in command at the South, as stated in a previous chapter, had
taken an early opportunity to strike the rebellion in its most vital
part, by arming negroes in his Depart