When the smoke had lifted from the field of the Black Battalions,
Lee stood in Richmond before a secret meeting of the leaders of the
Confederacy. Jefferson Davis presided. The meeting was called by request
of the Commander. He had an important announcement to make.
Facing the anxious group gathered around the Cabinet table he spoke with
unusual emphasis:
"Gentlemen, the end is in sight unless I can have more men. So long as
I can burrow underground my half-clothed and half-starved soldiers will
hold Grant at bay. I may hold him until next spring. Not longer. The
North is using negro troops. They have enrolled nearly two hundred
thousand. Their man power counts. We can arm our negroes to meet them.
They will fight under the leadership of their masters. I speak as a
mathematician and a soldier. I do not discuss the sentimental side. I
must have men and I must have them before spring or your cause is lost."
Robert Toombs of Georgia leaped to his feet. His words came slowly,
throbbing with emotion.
"Any suggestion from General Lee deserves the immediate attention of
this Government. He speaks to-night as an engineer and mathematician. He
has told us the worst. It was his duty. I honor him for it.
"But I differ with him. He can see but one angle of this question. He
is a soldier in field. It is our duty to see both the soldier's and the
statesman's point of view. And our cause is not so desperate as the
science of engineering and mathematics would tell us.
"The war of the revolution was won by Washington in spite of
mathematics. The odds were all against him. We have our chance. This war
is now in its fourth year. The outlook seems dark in Richmond. It is
darker in Washington. What have they accomplished in these years of
blood and tears? Nothing. Not a slave has been freed. Not a question at
issue has found its solution. The millions of the North are in despair
and they are crying for peace--peace at any price. The Presidential
election is but a few weeks off. They have nominated Abraham Lincoln
again for President. They had to, although he is the most unpopular man
who ever sat in the White House. All the mistakes, all the agony, all
the horrors of this war, they have unjustly heaped on his drooping
shoulders.
"McClellan is his opponent _on a peace platform_.
"The Republican Party is split as ours was before the war. John C.
Fremont is running on the Radical ticket against Lincoln. Unless a
miracle happens General George B. McClellan will be elected the next
President. If he is, the war ends in a draw.
"It's a fair chance. We can take it.
"But our chance of success is not the real question before us. It is
a bigger one. The question before you is bigger than the South. It
is bigger than the Republic. It is bigger than the Continent. It may
involve the future of civilization.
"The employment of these negro troops, clothed in the uniform of the
Union, marks the lowest tide mud to which its citizenship has ever sunk.
The profoundest word in history is _race_. The ancestral soul of a
people rules its destiny. What is the ancestral soul of the negro? The
measurement of the skull of the Egyptian is exactly the shape and size
of six thousand years ago. Has the negro moved upward? This republic
was born of the soul of a race of pioneer white freemen who settled our
continent and built an altar within its Forest Cathedral to Liberty and
Progress. In the record of man has a negro ever dreamed this dream?
"The Roman Republic fell and Rome became a degenerate Empire. Why?
Because of the lowering of her racial stock by slaves. The decline
of the Roman spirit was due to a mixture of races. The flower of her
manhood died on her far-flung battle lines. Slaves and degenerates at
home bred her future citizens.
"Have we also placed our feet on the path of oblivion? History is
littered with the wrecks of civilization. And always the secret is found
in racial degeneracy--the lowering of the standard of racial values.
Civilization is a name--an effect. Race is the cause. If a race
maintains its soul, it must remain itself and it must breed its best.
Race is the result of thousands of years of this selection. One drop of
negro blood makes a negro. The inferior can always blot out the superior
if granted equality.
"This uniform is the first step toward racial oblivion for the white
man in America. It is the first step toward equality. A people of half
breeds have no soul. They are always ungovernable. The negro is the
lowest species of man. Through Slavery he has been disciplined into the
family of humanity. We cannot yet grant him equality. Abraham Lincoln
who has consented to arm these blacks against us has himself said:
_"'There is a physical difference between the white and black races
which will forever forbid them living together on terms of political or
social equality.'_
"How can he prevent social and political equality once these black men
are clothed with the dignity of the uniform of a Nation? He has declared
his intention of colonizing the negro race. General Lee also holds this
as the solution. If Slavery falls, it _is_ the _only_ solution.
"In the meantime we hold fast to the faith within us. Dare to arm a
negro, drill and teach him to kill white men, and we are traitors to
country, traitors to humanity, traitors to civilization. Robert E. Lee
himself is the supreme contradiction of the sentimental mush involved in
the dogma of equality. His genius and character is a racial product.
"The man in gray stands for two things, Reverence for Law and the Racial
Supremacy of the White Man.
"If we must clothe negroes in gray to save the Confederacy, let it go
down in blood and ashes. We'll stand for this. And hand our ideal down
to our children. If defeat shall come, we may yet live to save the
Republic. We hold a message for Humanity."
There was no further discussion. The South chose death before racial
treason.