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264 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

discouragements which cost him his command. And many and grievous
disasters on flood and field were needed to educate the loyal nation and
President Lincoln up to the realization of the necessity, not to say justice, of
this position, and many devices, intermediate steps, and make-shifts were
suggested to smooth the way to the ultimate policy of freeing the slave, and
arming the freedmen.

When at last the truth began to dawn upon the administration that the
negro might be made useful to loyalty, as well as to treason, to the Union as
well as to the Confederacy, it then considered in what way it could employ
him, which would in the least shock and offend the popular prejudice against
him. He was already in the army as a waiter, and in that capacity there was
no objection to him, and so it was thought that as this was the case, the feeling
which tolerated him as a waiter would not seriously object if he should
be admitted to the army as a laborer, especially as no one under a southern
sun cared to have a monopoly of digging and toiling in trenches. This was
the first step in employing negroes in the United States service. The second
step was to give them a peculiar costume which should distinguish them
from soldiers, and yet mark them as a part of the loyal force. As the eyes of
the loyal administration still further opened, it was proposed to give these
laborers something better than spades and shovels with which to defend
themselves in cases of emergency. Still later it was proposed to make them
soldiers, but soldiers without the blue uniform. Soldiers with a mark upon
them to show that they were inferior to other soldiers; soldiers with a badge
of degradation upon them. However, once in the army as a laborer, once
there with a red shirt on his back and a pistol in his belt the negro was not
long in appearing on the field as a soldier. But still he was not to be a soldier
in the sense, and on an equal footing, with white soldiers. It was given out
that he was not to be employed in the open field with white troops, under the
inspiration of doing battle and winning victories for the Union cause, and in
the face and teeth of his old masters, but that he should be made to garrison
forts in yellow fever and otherwise unhealthy localities of the South, to save
the health of white soldiers, and in order to keep up the distinction further
the black soldiers were to have only half the wages of the white soldiers, and
were to be commanded entirely by white commissioned officers. While of
course I was deeply pained and saddened by the estimate thus put upon my
race, and grieved at the slowness of heart which marked the conduct of the
loyal government, I was not discouraged, and urged every man who could to
enlist; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder, and the star-
spangled banner over his head. Hence, as soon as Governor Andrew of