Lincoln In Caricature
by Rufus Rockwell Wilson
The cartoon, The Black Draft, drawn by
Tenniel appeared in London Punch on November 19, 1864. Here Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Davis again keep company, the one at the pistol’s point and the other with a
rawhide forcing two frightened negroes to drink from bowls labeled
“Conscription.” But this satire loses part of its force when the fact is
recalled that every man of color who served in the Union Army did so as a
volunteer. The men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts—the first colored regiment
of the North to enter the war—who fell with their white colonel, Robert Gould
Shaw, in the gallant but hopeless assault on Fort Wagner in July, 1863, were
volunteers.
So were the 180,000 other men of color who,
following their example, enlisted under the Union flag before the war’s end. The
employment of colored soldiers early became a matter of hopeful concern to Mr.
Lincoln. “I am told,” he wrote on March 23, 1863, to Andrew Johnson, then
military governor of Tennessee, “you have at least thought of raising a negro
military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as
some man of your position and ability to go to this work. When I speak of your
position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave State and himself a
slaveholder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed
force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black
soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once.”
And in August, 1863, after the fall of
Vicksburg, the President addressed General Grant in like manner regarding the
enlistment of colored troops. ‘‘I believe,” he wrote, “it is a resource which,
if vigorously applied now, will soon close this contest. It works
doubly—weakening the enemy and strengthening us. We were not fully ripe for it
until the river was open. Now I think at least 100,000 can and ought to be
organized along its shores, relieving all the white troops to serve elsewhere.”
And Grant promptly replied: “By arming the negro we have added a powerful ally.
They will make good soldiers, and taking them from the enemy weakens him in the
same proportion they strengthen us.’’
Mr. Lincoln and General Grant proved true
prophets. Until the war ended colored volunteers fought gallantly on many
sections of the battle front, and, after the lapse of four score years, the
widows of a goodly number of them still hold places on the pension rolls at
Washington.