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.
From his autobiography, Douglass describes the Union administration's reluctant realization that Black people could serve the Union cause.
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The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered.