line of communication by railroad, can weaken
your defense. He must, therefore, look to the other reasons
stated by you, for an explanation of your declining the
command.

"You say that since the arrival of the negro regiment you
have seen symptoms of a servile insurrection. But as the
only regiment that arrived there got there as soon as your
own command, of course the appearance of such symptoms is
since their arrival.

"Have you not mistaken the cause? Is it the arrival of a
negro regiment, or is it the arrival of United States
troops, carrying by the act of congress freedom to this
servile race? Did you expect to march into that country,
drained, as you say it is, by conscription of all its
able-bodied white men, without leaving the negroes free to
show symptoms of servile insurrection? Does not this state
of things arise from the very fact of war itself? You are in
a country where now the negroes outnumber the whites ten to
one, and these whites are in rebellion against the
government, or in terror seeking its protection. Upon
reflection, can you doubt that the same state of things
would have arisen without the presence of a colored
regiment? Did you not see symptoms of the same things upon
the plantations here upon our arrival, although, under much
less favorable circumstances for revolt?

"You say that the prospect of such an insurrection is
heart-rending, and that you cannot be responsible for it.
The responsibility rests upon those who have begun and
carried out this war, and who have stopped at no barbarity,
at no act of outrage, upon the citizens and soldiers of the
United States. You have forwarded me the records of a
pretended court-martial, showing that seven men of one of
your regiments, who enlisted here in the Eighth Vermont, who
had surrendered themselves prisoners of war, were in cold
blood murdered, and, as certain information shows me,
required to dig their own graves! You are asked if this is
not an occurrence as heart-rending as a prospective servile
insurrection.

"The question is now to be met, whether, in a hostile,
rebellious part of the state, where this very murder has
been committed by the militia, you are to stop in the
operations of the field to put down servile insurrection,