ownship--were to induce and
effect. The depleted ranks of the army were filled to its maximum, and
with a hitherto victorious and gallant leader would be hurled against
the fortifications of the Confederacy with new energy and determination.

Early in January, General Burnside was ordered again to take command of
the Ninth Army Corps, and to recruit its strength to fifty thousand
effective men, which he immediately began to do. General Butler, then in
command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, began the
organization of the Army of the James, collecting at Norfolk, Portsmouth
and on the Peninsula, the forces scattered throughout his Department,
and to recruit Phalanx regiments. In March, General Grant was called to
Washington, and received the appointment of Lieutenant General, and
placed in command of the armies of the Republic. He immediately began
their reorganization, as a preliminary to attacking Lee's veteran army
of northern Virginia.

As has before been stated, the negro had, up to this time, taken no very
active part in the battles fought in Virginia. The seed of prejudice
sown by Generals McDowell and McClellan at the beginning of hostilities,
had ripened into productive fruit. The Army of the Potomac being early
engaged in apprehending and returning runaway slaves to their presumed
owners, had imbibed a bitter, unrelenting hatred for the poor, but ever
loyal, negro. To this bitterness the Emancipation Proclamation gave a
zest, through the pro-slavery press at the North, which taunted the
soldiers with "_fighting to free the negroes_." This feeling had served
to practically keep the negro, as a soldier, out of the Army of the
Potomac.

General Burnside, upon assuming his command, asked for and obtained
permission from the War Department to raise and unite a division of
Negro troops to the 9th Army Corps. Annapolis, Md., was selected as the
"depot and rendezvous," and very soon Camp Stanton had received its
allowance of Phalanx regiments for the Corps. Early in April, the camp
was broken, and the line of march taken for Washington. It was rumored
throughout the city that the 9th Corps would pass through there, and
that about 6,000 Phalanx men would be among the troops. The citizens
were on the _qui vive_; members of Congress and the President were eager
to witness the passage of the Corps.

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 25th of April, the head of the
column entered the city, and at ele