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get some expression of the views of other gentlemen; also, from General Meigs, if possible, touching the whole question of the best use and application of the million grant, with a view to the speediest and most efficient service to be rendered by such an expenditure.
The Massachusetts Twenty-ninth Regiment, having been ordered to join the Army of the Tennessee, received a very warm and cordial reception in
Cincinnati, an account of which was transmitted to the
Governor by
Mr. Andrews, superintendent of the Soldiers' Home in that city; to which the
Governor replied on the 1st of April, in which he says,—
I trust, as you suggest, that a proper State pride might have been gratified, had I witnessed the march of the Twenty-ninth through Cincinnati.
But the pride in the fact that they were Massachusetts men could have no proportion to the pride in the fact that they were United States soldiers.
On the same day, the
Governor wrote a long letter to the
Secretary of War in regard to raising a colored brigade in
North Carolina, which could be easily done if the proper man should be selected to organize and command it. ‘It needs a man of soul for any movement, even to trundle a wheelbarrow.’
His own undertaking to raise a colored regiment in
Massachusetts ‘was begun with talking with you about
North Carolina.’
General Foster, in command in that State, regarded favorably the formation of colored troops.
The Governor recommended
Brigadier-General Frank Barlow, of New York, as a good officer to detail for such a command.
It appears that
Colonel Edward A. Wilde, of the Massachusetts Thirty-fifth Regiment, was also named for brigadier-general of colored troops; and that the subject was brought to the attention of
Secretary Stanton by
Lieutenant-Colonel Browne, when in
Washington, at this time; but the former did not receive the proposition favorably, as we find by a letter written on the 16th of April by the
Governor to
Secretary Stanton, which commences as follows:—
I am surprised and sorry to perceive, by Lieutenant-Colonel Browne's report, that you seem to have regarded me as trying to force upon the Government a new brigadier-general, and that you refuse to commission Colonel Wilde as a brigadier-general until he shall have raised a colored brigade in North Carolina.
