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[466] was authorized to raise regiments of negroes. In March, George L. Thomas, adjutant-general, was sent West to organize the colored fugitives into military commands. General Prentiss formed two regiments at Helena; General Thomas five at Milliken Bend, three at Grand Gulf, and before leaving the West in June organized twenty more. General Banks chose to call the colored body which he also organized, the Corps d'afrique. Over 15,000 were quickly mustered in the Gulf department, to which adding the regiments raised in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, the total soon reached 50,000 men. This was conceived to be a very appreciable relief from the burden of the impending draft, and an important accession to the necessary military strength of the Federal armies. It was found necessary very soon to put these negroes, who were enlisted to do only post and garrison duty, into the forefront of battle, even ‘in several instances in the lead in assaulting columns,’—as at Port Hudson and Fort Wagner, on which occasions their white commanders bear testimony to the efficiency with which they fought. The negroes are entitled to the credit of vindicating the statement as to a military necessity for their enrollment to enable the Federal armies to match the Confederate. No danger from servile insurrections was seriously apprehended even in the sections most densely occupied by the negroes, but there were well-grounded fears of outrages that could be perpetrated by negroes collected at random, armed, undisciplined, and officered by white men of vindictive mood and avaricious mind. Southern people saw in this use of the negroes as soldiers the willingness of the extremists to make a war of havoc, resulting in the extermination of white and black alike; —into which lurid aspect of the question they were led by speeches in Congress, the tone of the press, and the recommendations of prominent army officers. In addition to these fears there was the powerful Southern
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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