“Chief of Negro affairs” for the entire district
under his jurisdiction.
Crops were harvested,
wages paid, wood cutters swarmed in forests to
furnish fuel for the Federal gun-boats, cabins were
erected and a regular “Freedmen’s Bureau” came
gradually into operation. The Negroes thus employed as regular helpers and laborers in the
army, swelled to more than 200,000 before the
end of the war; and if we count transient workers
and spies who helped with information, the number probably reached a half million.
If now the Negro could work for the Union Army why could he not also fight? We have seen in the last chapter how the nation hesitated and then yielded in 1862. The critical Battle of Antietam took place September 17th and the confederate avalanche was checked. Five days later, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that he was going to recommend an appropriation by Congress for encouraging the gradual abolition of slavery through payment for the slaves; and that on the following January 1st, in all the territory which was still at war with the United States, he proposed to declare the slaves free as a military measure.[1] Thus the year 1862 saw the Negro as an active worker in the army and as a soldier.
- ↑ Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Sept. 22, 1862.
