nzy. The Confederate Senate talked of raising the black flag;
Jefferson Davis's message stigmatized it as "the most execrable measure
recorded in the history of guilty man"; and a joint resolution of the
Confederate Congress prescribed that white officers of negro Union
soldiers "shall, if captured, be put to death, or be otherwise punished
at the discretion of the court." The general orders of some subordinate
Confederate commanders repeated or rivaled such denunciations and
threats.

Fortunately, the records of the war are not stained with either excesses
by the colored troops or even a single instance of such proclaimed
barbarity upon white Union officers; and the visitation of vengeance
upon negro soldiers is confined, so far as known, to the single instance
of the massacre at Fort Pillow. In that deplorable affair, the
Confederate commander reported, by telegraph, that in thirty minutes he
stormed a fort manned by seven hundred, and captured the entire garrison
killing five hundred and taking one hundred prisoners while he sustained
a loss of only twenty killed and sixty wounded. It is unnecessary to
explain that the bulk of the slain were colored soldiers. Making due
allowance for the heat of battle, history can considerately veil closer
scrutiny into the realities wrapped in the exaggerated boast of such a
victory.

The Fort Pillow incident, which occurred in the spring of 1864, brought
upon President Lincoln the very serious question of enforcing an order
of retaliation which had been issued on July 30, 1863, as an answer to
the Confederate joint resolution of May 1. Mr. Lincoln's freedom from
every trace of passion was as conspicuous in this as in all his official
acts. In a little address at Baltimore, while referring to the rumor of
the massacre which had just been received, Mr. Lincoln said:

"We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white officer
commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels when made
a prisoner. We fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. To
take the life of one of their prisoners on the assumption that they
murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours,
might be too serious, too cruel, a mistake."

When more authentic information arrived, the matter was very earnestly
debated by the assembled cabinet; but the discussion only served to
bring out in stronger light the inherent dangers of either course. In
this nice balancing of