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from Government itself, so much the worse, for this strikes at the foundation of all rectitude, all honor, all obligation.
Mr. Senator Fessenden said, in the debate on Mr. Wilson's bill, January 4, that the Government was not bound by the unauthorized promises of irresponsible recruiting officers.
But is the Government itself an irresponsible recruiting officer?
and if men have volunteered in good faith on the written assurances of the Secretary of War, is not Congress bound, in all decency, either to fulfil those pledges or to disband the regiments?
Mr. Senator Doolittle argued in the same debate that white soldiers should receive higher pay than black ones, because the families of the latter were often supported by Government.
What an astounding statement of fact is this!
In the white regiment in which I was formerly an officer (the Massachusetts Fifty-First) nine tenths of the soldiers'.families, in addition to the pay and bounties, drew regularly their “State aid.”
Among my black soldiers, with half-pay and no bounty, not a family receives any aid. Is there to be no limit, no end to the injustice we heap upon this unfortunate people?
Cannot even the fact of their being in arms for the nation, liable to die any day in its defence, secure them ordinary justice?
Is the nation so poor, and so utterly demoralized by its pauperism, that after it has had the lives of these men, it must turn round to filch six dollars of the monthly pay which the Secretary of War promised to their widows?
It is even so, if the excuses of Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Doolittle are to be accepted by Congress and by the people.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
T. W. Higginson, Colonel commanding 1st S. C. Volunteers.
