d children, declared to be
forever free. You and all in your command will so treat and regard them.

Yours truly,

EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War. BRIGADIER-GENERAL SAXTON.

Appendix D The Struggle for Pay

The story of the attempt to cut down the pay of the colored troops is
too long, too complicated, and too humiliating, to be here narrated. In
the case of my regiment there stood on record the direct pledge of the
War Department to General Saxton that their pay should be the same as
that of whites. So clear was this that our kind paymaster, Major W. J.
Wood, of New Jersey, took upon himself the responsibility of paying the
price agreed upon, for five months, till he was compelled by express
orders to reduce it from thirteen dollars per month to ten dollars,
and from that to seven dollars,--the pay of quartermaster's men and
day-laborers. At the same time the "stoppages" from the pay-rolls for
the loss of all equipments and articles of clothing remained the same
as for all other soldiers, so that it placed the men in the most painful
and humiliating condition. Many of them had families to provide for, and
between the actual distress, the sense of wrong, the taunts of those who
had refused to enlist from the fear of being cheated, and the doubt how
much farther the cheat might be carried, the poor fellows were goaded
to the utmost. In the Third South Carolina regiment, Sergeant William
Walker was shot, by order of court-marital, for leading his company to
stack arms before their captain's tent, on the avowed ground that they
were released from duty by the refusal of the Government to fulfill
its share of the contract. The fear of such tragedies spread a cloud of
solicitude over every camp of colored soldiers for more than a year, and
the following series of letters will show through what wearisome labors
the final triumph of justice was secured. In these labors the chief
credit must be given to my admirable Adjutant, Lieutenant G. W.
Dewhurst In the matter of bounty justice is not yet obtained; there is
a discrimination against those colored soldiers who were slaves on April
19, 1861. Every officer, who through indolence or benevolent design
claimed on his muster-rolls that all his men had been free on that
day, secured for them the bounty; while every officer who, like myself,
obeyed orders and told the truth in each case, saw his men and
their families suffer for it, as I have done. A bill to abolish