more
than willing under the guidance of misguided southerners to offer
themselves for the service of actual warfare. So that during the early
days of the war, Negroes who volunteered were received into the
fighting forces by the rebelling States, and particularly during those
years in which the North was academically debating the advisability
of arming the Negro.[6]

In the first year of the war large numbers were received into the
service of the Confederate laboring units. In January, a dispatch from
Mr. Riordan at Charleston to Hon. Percy Walker at Mobile stated that
large numbers of Negroes from the plantations of Alabama were at work
on the redoubts. These were described as very substantially made,
strengthened by sand-bags and sheet-iron.[7] Negroes were employed in
building fortifications, as teamsters and helpers in army service
throughout the South.[8] In 1862, the Florida Legislature conferred
authority upon the Governor to impress slaves for military purposes,
if so authorized by the Confederate Government. The owners of the
slaves were to be compensated for this labor, and in turn they were to
furnish one good suit of clothes for each of the slaves impressed. The
wages were not to exceed twenty-five dollars a month.[9] The
Confederate Congress provided by law in February, 1864, for the
impressment of 20,000 slaves for menial service in the Confederate
army.[10] President Davis was so satisfied with their labor that he
suggested, in his annual message, November, 1864, that this number
should be increased to 40,000[11] with the promise of emancipation at
the end of their service.

Before the outbreak of the war and the beginning of actual
hostilities, the local authorities throughout the South had permitted
the enrollment for military service of organizations formed of free
Negroes, although no action had been taken or suggested by the
Confederate Government. It is said that some of these troops remained
in the service of the Confederacy during the period of the war, but
that they did not take part in any important engagements.[12] There
may be noted typical instances of the presence of Negroes in the State
Militia. In Louisiana, the Adjutant-General's Office of the Louisiana
Militia issued an order stating that "the Governor and the
Commander-in-Chief relying implicitly upon the loyalty of the free
colored population of the city and State, for the protection of their
homes, their property and for southern r