e people helped to fight your
battles by land and by sea. Some of your States were glad to
turn out corps of colored men, and to stand 'shoulder to
shoulder' with them.

"In your late war, they contributed largely towards some of
your most splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain,
where your fleets triumphed over a foe superior in numbers
and engines of death, they were manned, in a large
proportion, with men of color. And, in this very house, in
the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation
of all the branches of your government, authorizing the
Governor to accept the services of a corps of two thousand
free people of color. Sir, these were times which tried
men's souls. In these times it was no sporting matter to
bear arms. These were times, when a man who shouldered his
musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a
death wound from the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in
these times, these people were found as ready and as willing
to volunteer in your service as any other. They were not
compelled to go; they were not drafted. No, your pride had
placed them beyond your compulsory power. But there was no
necessity for its exercise; they were volunteers; yes, Sir,
volunteers to defend that very country from the inroads and
ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe, which had treated
them with insult, degradation and slavery.

"Volunteers are the best of soldiers. Give me the men,
whatever be their complexion, that willingly volunteer, and
not those who are compelled to turn out. Such men do not
fight from necessity, nor from mercenary motives, but from
principle."

Hon. Mr. Martindale, who represented a District of the State of New
York, in Congress in 1828, thus speaks of the negro soldiers:

"Slaves, or negroes who have been slaves, were enlisted as
soldiers in the War of the Revolution; and I myself saw a
battalion of them, as fine martial-looking men as I ever
saw, attached to the Northern army."

Up to this time the East had been the theatre of the war, with now and
then a battle in some one of the Middle Colonies, but the British
discovering that the people of the South acted indifferently in
maintaining and recruiting the army, transferred their operations to
that section. Maryland then stood as a middle State or Co