ll formed and well developed physically, capable of enduring
hard labor and of subsisting upon the plainest food. Their diet for
years had been of the simplest sort, and they had been subjected to a
system of regulations very much like those which are employed in the
management of armies. They had an hour to go to bed and an hour to
rise; left their homes only upon written "passes," and when abroad at
night were often halted by the wandering patrol. "Run, nigger, run,
the patrol get you," was a song of the slave children of South
Carolina.

Strangers who saw for the first time these people as they came out of
slavery in 1865 were usually impressed with their robust appearance,
and a conference of ex-slaves, assembled soon after the war,
introduced a resolution with the following declaration: "Whereas,
Slavery has left us in possession of strong and healthy bodies." It is
probable that at least a half-million of men of proper age could then
have been found among the newly liberated capable of bearing arms.
They were inured to the plain ration, to labor and fatigue, and to
subordination, and had long been accustomed to working together under
the immediate direction of foremen.

Two questions of importance naturally arose at this period: First, did
the American slave understand the issue that had been before the
country for more than a half-century and that was now dividing the
nation in twain and marshalling for deadly strife these two opposing
armies? Second, had he the courage necessary to take part in the
struggle and help save the Union? It would be a strange thing to say,
but nevertheless a thing entirely true, that many of the Negro slaves
had a clearer perception of the real question at issue than did some
of our most far-seeing statesmen, and a clearer vision of what would
be the outcome of the war. While the great men of the North were
striving to establish the doctrine that the coming war was merely to
settle the question of Secession, the slave knew better. God had hid
certain things from the wise and prudent and had revealed them unto
babes. Lincoln, the wisest of all, was slow to see that the issue he
himself had predicted was really at hand. As President, he declared
for the preservation of the Union, with or without slavery, or even
upon the terms which he had previously declared irreconcilable, "half
slave and half free." The Negro slave saw in the outbreak of the war
the death struggle of slavery. He kn