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Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
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From this time (and the fact ought to be remembered) the colored troops were called upon to occupy positions which required the courage, steadiness, and endurance of veterans, and even their enemies were obliged to admit that they proved…
In that terrible battle, under the wing of night, more cavils in respect of the quality of negro manhood were set at rest than could have been during a century of ordinary life and observation.
The 54th was not long in the field before it proved itself gallant and strong, worthy to rank with the most courageous of its white companions in arms.
Let us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best blessings of our posterity through all time.
Remember that in a contest with oppression, the Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with oppressors.
The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the plane of common equality with all other varieties of men.
One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty.
The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon!
More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis.
I am authorized to assure you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment, and the same bounty, secured to white soldiers.
We can get at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts.
In good earnest then, and after the best deliberation, I now for the first time during this war, feel at liberty to call and counsel you to arms.
The counsel I give comes of close observation of the great struggle now in progress, and of the deep conviction that this is your hour and mine.
They tell you this is the ‘white man’s war’; that you will be no ‘better off after than before the war’; that the getting of you into the army is to ‘sacrifice you on the first opportunity.’ Believe them not; cowards themselves, they do…
The office of speech now is only to point out when, where, and how to strike to the best advantage.
When the war is over, the country is saved, peace is established, and the black man’s rights are secured, as they will be, history with an impartial hand will dispose of that and sundry other questions.
Hence with every reverse to the national arms, with every exulting shout of victory raised by the slaveholding rebels, I have implored the imperiled nation to unchain against her foes, her powerful black hand.
Only a moderate share of sagacity was needed to see that the arm of the slave was the best defense against the arm of the slaveholder.
A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.
When first the rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumpter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white men.
Soldiers with a mark upon them to show that they were inferior to other soldiers; soldiers with a badge of degradation upon them.
