The Daily Dispatch: March 1, 1865., [Electronic resource]

In justice to General Lee, it deserves to be remembered hereafter that the employment of negro soldiers is not a recent suggestion of his, made at the eleventh hour. We believe that for a long time he has foreseen the necessity which has now arisen, and has labored in vain to meet it by the only means at our command. At a period when it was the fashion to declare that negroes could not be made soldiers, and before that fact had been demonstrated in the Federal armies, General Lee understood their military capacities, and would gladly have availed himself of this unemployed element of military strength. If his counsels could have controlled the deliberations of Congress, the two hundred thousand negroes now in the Federal service might be in our own ranks, and the result of this contest be no longer doubtful.

The plan of General Lee has been, and still is, to hold out to this class of our population stronger inducements than can be presented by the enemy; to give those of them who bear arms freedom and a home. The negro is no longer so ignorant as to imagine that the freedom offered by the enemy is anything but freedom to starve, and that such a thing as a home is beyond their power to give. In the war of the Revolution, a considerable number of negroes in Virginia and other colonies remained faithful to the royal cause. Under the auspices of leading British philanthropists they were promised a home and farm in Sierra Leone, and transported to that distant region, where they found themselves miserably deceived and disappointed; and finally the whole settlement became extinct. The promises that the Yankees make the negroes of our own times will prove equally illusory. If there is any home to be disposed of here, they will prefer to have it themselves, and not give it to negroes. The Southern servant has sagacity enough to know that when his master makes him a promise he will keep it, and he has the utmost reliance on his honesty and good faith. On the other hand, when the Yankees assure him that he shall have freedom and a home, they promise what is not in their power to give, and what they would not if they had. No negro is so stupid as to suppose that, if the Yankees could get possession of all the fine farms in the world, they are going to make a present of one of them to the blacks!

We feel entirely confident that if General Lee's statesmanlike counsels had been adopted a year ago, the future freedom of Southern white men would be no longer a question. And that is what we are fighting for. Our own freedom! All else is but as the small dust of the balance.