ssible in the great Republic, and gave a
new impulse to the cause of human freedom. Its influence
upon American slaves was immediate and startlingly
revolutionary, lifting them from the condition of despised
chattels, bought and sold like sheep in the market, with no
rights which the white man was bound to respect,--to the
exalted plane of American citizenship; made them free men,
the peers in every civil and political right, of their late
masters. Within about a decade after the close of the war,
negroes, lately slaves, were legislators, state officers,
members of Congress, and for a brief time one presided over
the Senate of the United States, where only a few years
before, Toombs had boasted that he would yet call the roll
of his slaves in the shade of Bunker Hill.

"To-day slavery finds no advocate, and the colored race in
America is making steady progress in all the elements of
civilization. The conduct of the American slave during, and
since the war, has wrought an extraordinary change in public
sentiment, regarding the capabilities of the race.

"The manly qualities of the negro soldiers, evinced in camp,
on the march and in battle, won for them golden opinions,
made their freedom a necessity and their citizenship a
certainty.

"Those of us who assisted in organizing, disciplining and
leading negro troops in battle, may, perhaps, be pardoned
for feeling a good degree of pride in our share of the
thrilling events of the great war.

"When Sumter was fired upon, April, 1861, I was 21; a member
of the Senior Class in Franklin College, Indiana. I enlisted
in the 7th Indiana Volunteer infantry and served as a
private soldier for three months in West Virginia, under
Gen. McClellan,--'the young Napoleon,' as he was even then
known. I participated in the battle of Carricks Ford, where
Gen. Garnett was killed and his army defeated. In August,
1862, I re-enlisted as a First Lieutenant in the 70th
Indiana, (Col. Benjamin Harrison) and saw service in
Kentucky and Tennessee.

"In January 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation of
Emancipation, and incorporated in it the policy of arming
the negro for special service in the Union army. Thus the
question was fairly up, and I entered into its discussion
with the d