this
distinction was introduced by Mr. Wilson at the last session, but failed
to pass the House. It is hoped that next winter may remove this last
vestige of the weary contest

To show how persistently and for how long a period these claims had to
be urged on Congress, I reprint such of my own printed letters on the
subject as are now in my possession. There are one or two of which I
have no copies. It was especially in the Senate that it was so difficult
to get justice done; and our thanks will always be especially due to
Hon. Charles Sumner and Hon. Henry Wilson for their advocacy of our
simple rights. The records of those sessions will show who advocated the
fraud.

To the Editor of the _New York Tribune_:

SIR,--No one can overstate the intense anxiety with which the officers
of colored regiments in this Department are awaiting action from
Congress in regard to arrears of pay of their men.

It is not a matter of dollars and cents only; it is a question of common
honesty,--whether the United States Government has sufficient integrity
for the fulfillment of an explicit business contract.

The public seems to suppose that all required justice will be done by
the passage of a bill equalizing the pay of all soldiers for the future.
But, so far as my own regiment is concerned, this is but half the
question. My men have been nearly sixteen months in the service, and for
them the immediate issue is the question of arrears.

They understand the matter thoroughly, if the public do not Every one
of them knows that he volunteered under an explicit _written assurance_
from the War Department that he should have the pay of a white soldier.
He knows that for five months the regiment received that pay, after
which it was cut down from the promised thirteen dollars per month to
ten dollars, for some reason to him inscrutable.

He does _not_ know for I have not yet dared to tell the men--that the
Paymaster has been already reproved by the Pay Department for fulfilling
even in part the pledges of the War Department; that at the next payment
the ten dollars are to be further reduced to seven; and that, to crown
the whole, all the previous overpay is to be again deducted or "stopped"
from the future wages, thus leaving them a little more than a dollar a
month for six months to come, unless Congress interfere!

Yet so clear were the terms of the contract that Mr. Solicitor Whiting,
having examined the original instructions from