FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

LEXINGTON, Ky., June 4th,

FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH. 425

General Order, No. 87.

HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTH, 1863,0'}

CINCINNATI, Oиo, June 2d, 1863.

It is announced, for the information of all concerned, at the publication or circulation of books containing entiments of a disloyal tendency comes clearly within he reach of General Order No. 38, and those who of end will be dealt with accordingly. By command of Major-General BURNSIDE. [Signed]

LEWIS RICHMOND, Assistant Adjutant-General. W. P. ANDERSON, Assistant Adjutant-General. For the order, No. 88, thus alluded to, see HABEAS CORPUS.

On the 8th of June a meeting of editors was weld in New York, at which the following newspapers were represented:

1. New York Leader....

John Clancy. Express..... ...Jas. Brooks. Atlas.... Anson Herrick. Independent..... ...Theodore Tilton. Journal of Commerce... Wm. C. Prime. Tribune... Horace Greeley. .Mr. Ottendorfer.

...

.J. Beach. ..Wm. Cauldwell. H. P. Whitney.

Staats Zeitung..... Sun...... Sunday Mercury Argus... ..Elon Comstock. Jewish Messenger.. M. S. Isaacs. Irish American... .P. J. Meehan. Scientific American...R. McFarlane. New Yorker........ ..C. Mathews. Horace Greeley was called to the chair, and Offered a series of resolutions which were reerred to a committee who reported the resoluions of Mr. Greeley, somewhat amended, as Follows:

15.

......

Whereas the liberty and rights of the press as afected by the existence and necessities of a state of var, and especially of civil war, are topics of the highest public concern, and

Whereas recent events indicate the existence of grave misapprehensions and lamentable confusion of deas with regard to this vital question; therefore, Resolved, That our conception of the rights and duties of the press in a season convulsion and public peril like the present, are briefly summed up in the following propositions:

1. We recognize and affirm the duty of fidelity to the Constitution, Government, and Laws of our country, as a high moral as well as political obligation resting on every citizen, and neither claim for ourselves nor concede to others any exemption from its require ments or privilege to evade their sacred and binding force.

2. That treason and rebellion are crimes, by the fundamental law of this as of every other country; and nowhere else so culpable, so abhorrent, as in a repub lic, where each man has an equal voice and vote in the peaceful and legal direction of public affairs.

3. While we thus emphatically disclaim and deny any right as inhering in journalists or others to incite, advocate, abet, uphold, or justify treason or rebellion, we respectfully but firmly assert and maintain the right of the press to criticize firmly and fearlessly the

wherein hostilities actually exist or are immediately threatened, and we deny the right of any military officer to suppress the issues or forbid the general circulation of journals printed hundreds of miles from the seat of war.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted. The effect of this emphatic declaration of sentiments was soon felt. No more papers were suppressed, and several which had been were again allowed circulation through the mails.

In the Middle Department, commanded by Gen. Schenck, the press was forbidden to make extracts from certain New York papers, as appears by the following from the provost-marshal at Baltimore:

HEADQUARTERS MIDDLE DEP'T, 8TH ARMY CORPS,
OFFICE PROVOST-MARSHAL,

BALTIMORE, June 21st, 1863. An order was published in the evening edition of the "Republican," also in the "Sunday Telegram," of to-day, purporting to emanate from this office, in reference to the suppression of certain newspapers. No such order as thus published was issued. It is perhaps a misunderstanding, which is thus explained. I was directed by the major-general commanding, to notify the editors of some of the city papers, "that no extracts from the New York World,' New York Express, Caucasian,' 'Cincinnati Inquirer,' and 'Chicago Times,' would be permitted to be published in this department," which was duly done, and from this fact the mistake must have occurred. I therefore respectfully request that this explanation be published. WILLIAM S. FISH,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Provost-Marshal. FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH. In the ANNUAL CYCLOPÆDIA for 1861 and 1862 under the title SLAVES, there has been traced the progress which had been made, up to January, 1863, in solving the vexed question of what should be done with the Africans or persons of African descent, who had been the slaves of rebel masters, and had either escaped from, or been abandoned by, those who had formerly held them in slavery. The President's Emancipation Proclamation gave a new and greatly increased importance to this problem. That proclamation, as soon as it was promulgated, gave an impulse to the influx of the negroes into the Union lines, often in a state of utter destitution both of food and clothing, and that influx appeared to be destined to increase as the proclamation was more and more widely disseminated, until it might result in the coming in of by far the greater part of the bondmen of the insurrectionary States. Without some mode of employment for them, some means of enabling them to earn their subsistence, the army would soon be swamped, or these helpless In a time of peace there would have been no creatures must perish by cold and starvation. difficulty, since there would have been a demand for the labor of all who were able to

work, in cultivating the soil. There was, indeed, employment sufficient for a considerable number in acting as laborers, hostlers, cooks, teamsters, &c., and for the women in washing and other labor in the camps and at the hospitals, but these employments were insufficient for the vast multitude who were constantly pouring into the army lines.

The Government had hitherto discouraged the organization of regiments of colored troops, and had not favored their enlistment, even when attempted in the Northern States. There had been, it is true, two or three such regiments formed, one in Kansas, and one or two in South Carolina, but these had been considered by the Government doubtful experiments. It was known that the Confederates had, in a few instances, organized such regiments, though their fear of their fidelity had prevented them from doing so to any considerable extent. A black regiment had, however, been organized in New Orleans, and elsewhere negroes had been in the Confederate ranks as sharpshooters, sentinels, &c., though seldom in any considerable numbers. Some of the border States, and Kentucky in particular, opposed very strenuously the organization of colored regiments, and she has maintained her opposition up to the present time. In most of the States, however, after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, there was an increasing feeling in favor of using the able-bodied negroes as soldiers, to aid in the overthrow of the Rebellion. It was urged in favor of this, that they possessed the qualities of obedience, docility, imitation, and emulation, which would. make them good soldiers; that they were familiar with the country which was the seat of war, and would be of great value as scouts; that they were inured to the climate, which affected so seriously white soldiers, and that their employment in this capacity would more effectually cripple the resources of the Confederates than any other measure, and would tend to render further conflict on their part hopeless. To the objections that they would be guilty of great and horrible outrages upon the weak and helpless families of the enemy, it was answered that the negro was not vindictive in his nature, and that from his ready submission to his officers it was rather to be expected that, under proper discipline, the colored troops would prove more correct in their deportment than white regiments. The approach of a draft which would fall heavily upon the workshops, manufactories, and farms of the North, already depleted of their operatives to such an extent as greatly to enhance the price of skilled labor, led to the conviction on the part of the great body of the people of the North, that these thews and sinews thus at their command and for the most part ready and willing for their service, might as well be employed, so far as they would go toward filling up the ranks of the armies east and west, as their own. (See ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES.)

The Government had arrived at similar conclusions early in the year. They had, indeed, been foreshadowed in that passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, in which the President had said:

"And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service."

On the 20th of January an order was issued from the War Department authorizing Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, to raise regiments of African descent. In March the adjutant-general, Gen. L. Thomas, was sent to the West to organize colored regiments from the freedmen who were coming in large numbers into the Union lines from Cairo to Natchez. At Helena Gen. Prentiss asked the privilege of organizing a regiment (he did raise two, which afterward proved the means of the preservation of that post), and Gen. Thomas granted his request. At Milliken's Bend, General Thomas organized five regiments, at Grand Gulf three more, and before leaving the Mis sissippi Valley, as he was compelled to do by severe illness, in June he had completed arrangements for raising twenty colored regiments. Meantime Gen. Banks had also been active in the formation of what he denominated a Corps d'Afrique, a body of colored troops, at first put under the command of BrigadierGeneral H. E. Paine, and after he was severely wounded in the assault on Port Hudson, under that of Brig.-Gen. Ullmann. Over 15,000 of these troops were mustered into the service in the Department of the Gulf. In the Department of the South three regiments were or ganized at Hilton Head before June, and several others later in the year. Several regiments were also raised in North Carolina, in Norfolk, Virginia and its vicinity, in Washington, D. C., and in Maryland. At the close of the year the number of colored troops in the United States service exceeded 50,000. They were with very few exceptions officered by whites, and the applicants for commands in these regiments underwent a very severe and critical examination by a board of army officers, of which General Silas Casey was president. More than half the applicants were rejected, and of those received, by far the greater part were assigned to a rank materially below that for which they applied. The result has been that no regiments in the volunteer army have been under the command of more efficient and thoroughly competent officers than those composed of "soldiers of Afri can descent." On the 22d of May, a bureau of colored troops was organized in the War Department. A Commission of Inquiry in regard to the numbers, condition, capacity, and future wants of the freedmen, consisting of Robert Dale Owen, James McKaye, and Samuel G. Howe, had been appointed by the Secre tary of War and made a preliminary report on

these topics on the 30th of June, 1863. As may be inferred from the language of the President's proclamation, it was at first expected that the colored soldiers would be employed almost exclusively in post and garrison duty. Emergencies, however, soon occurred in which it was found necessary to bring them into the field, and even when but partially disciplined they acquitted themselves so well as to elicit the commendations of the generals in command, and to cause their being placed in several instances in the lead in assaulting columns. At Milliken's Bend, on the 6th of June, the Confederates made an attack in large force, but were repulsed with heavy loss by the determined bravery of the colored troops. At the second assault on Port Hudson, June 14th, the colored troops under Gen. Paine led the forlorn hope, and amid fearful slaughter planted the Union flag on the parapet, and when their commander was terribly wounded and had fallen in front of the enemy's works, and the entire assaulting force had returned to their lines, nearly half a mile from the Confederate works, on the call for volunteers to bring off the wounded general under the terrific fire of the Confederate batteries, when no white soldiers volunteered, sixteen soldiers from the colored regiments stepped out and moved forward in squads of four, and succeeded in bearing him to the Union lines, though fourteen of the sixteen paid the forfeit of their daring with their lives.

At Fort Wagner, Morris Island, in the Department of the South, at the assault of the 18th of July, the colored regiments, under the command of Gen. George C. Strong, fought with great bravery; the 54th Massachusetts (colored) leading in the assault, and losing their gallant colonel, R. G. Shaw, and most of their officers, and nearly two hundred of their men. At Helena, Ark., on the 4th of July, and on other occasions, they have also acquitted themselves with honor. The officers say that they will follow their officers, even in charges or assaults of great peril, far more readily than white soldiers, but when deprived of their commanders would not in general fight independently so well as those troops who have had more education. Their camps are generally in better order, and the men pay more regard to neatness and order in their own dress than most white soldiers. They endure the exposure to the climate and the privations of the camp much better than whites, and the rate of mortality among them is much lower than among the white troops.

The Emancipation Proclamation and the employment by the United States Government of the emancipated negroes as soldiers, as might have been expected, furnished occasion for violent denunciation to the Confederate authorities. In his message to the Confederate Congress, Jan. 12th, 1863, Mr. Jefferson Davis made use of the following language in reference to it: "The public journals of the North

have been received, containing a proclamation, dated on the first day of the present month, signed by the President of the United States, in which he orders and declares all slaves within ten of the States of the Confederacy to be free, except such as are found within certain districts now occupied in part by the armed forces of the enemy. We may well leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries, to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race-peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere-are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation 'to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defence.' Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man, is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that I shall-unless in your wisdom you deem some other course more expedient-deliver to the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in the proclamation, that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting such insurrection." (See PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.)

Mr. Davis subsequently found it advisable to recede from the execution of this threat, but in no case have the officers in command of colored troops, or the colored soldiers themselves when taken prisoners, been exchanged, and there has been reason for apprehension that the freedmen soldiers when captured have been either killed or remanded to slavery. The evidence tending to this conclusion was collected by Major-Gen. E. A. Hitchcock, the Commissioner of Exchanges, and laid before the Government, and the following general order was issued in consequence:

General Order, No. 252.

WAB DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 81st, 1863. The following order of the President is published, for the information and government of all concerned: EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 30th, 1863. It is the duty of every Government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and ized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the the usages and customs of war, as carried on by civiltreatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the civili

zation of the age.

The Government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy

shall sell or enslave any one because of his color, the offence shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession. It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a Rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a Rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released, and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By order of the Secretary of War.

E. D. TOWNSEND, Asst. Adjt.-Gen. But while the able-bodied men among the freedmen were thus enlisted in the military and naval service of the United States, and many of the women found employment in the vicinity of the camps, garrisons and hospitals, there was a much larger class who were not able-bodied, some of them capable of performing some labor, others feeble, decrepit and helpless. In the regions which were occupied by Federal troops, the planters who sympathized with the Southern Confederacy had generally fled southward, taking with them or sending before them their able-bodied slaves, and leaving to the mercy of the invading army the old and decrepit, and the children who were too young to be of much value. Those who escaped, too, and came into the Union lines, often encountered great hardships in doing so, and in many instances arrived sick, halfstarved, and with only a few rags for clothing. It was obviously the duty of the Government to provide in part at least for these poor creatures, and to furnish employment for such of them as were able to work, that they might sustain themselves and their more helpless kindred. There were, however, serious practical difficulties in the way. On the Mississippi, especially below Vicksburg, it was a matter of difficulty to obtain a sufficiency of rations for the soldiers, to say nothing of the 30,000 or 40,000 helpless colored people who looked to the Government for food, and the Government ration was not well adapted to the freedmen who had been accustomed all their lives to corn bread and bacon. Clothing the Government had not, and could not procure, except for the uniforms of its soldiers. These sick, helpless, feeble and infirm persons, and all who were not employed with the army, were therefore collected in camps at different points and rations furnished them, such clothing as could be collected provided, and appeals made to the people of the North for new and second-hand clothing to supply their needs. Generous responses were made to these appeals, and vast quantities of clothing forwarded. The Western Sanitary Commission at St. Louis was particularly active in ministering to their wants, and in some measure occupied the position of a guardian to them, distributing clothing, books and medicines among them, establishing schools, and teaching them to make a judicious use of the Government rations. Those who were capable of performing some labor, were presently employed on the abandoned plantations, which

were leased under certain restrictions to tenants for one year. Different plans were adopted in different sections for accomplishing this; all of them more or less faulty, though some better devised than others. Adjutant General Thomas, who had done so much in the way of organizing colored regiments, consulted with General Grant and other officers, and with the President, and announced the following plan for the region from Columbus, Ky., to Grand Gulf, Mississippi:

First. The Government of the United States, in or der to secure the safety of commerce and navigation on the Mississippi, have determined to locate on or near its beach a loyal population, who will protect incommercial intercourse on this great inland sea. That stead of destroying-as is now done-the freedom of this policy may the more speedily receive its initiation, George B. Field, Capt. A. E. Shickle, and the Rev. D. S. Livermore are hereby appointed commissioners, whose duty it shall be to superintend the letting of cations, and to see that the mutual obligations between plantations to persons of proper character and qualifithe negroes and their employers or superintendents shall be faithfully performed; to attend in some meas. ure to their moral and intellectual wants, and generally negroes that are to be put to agricultural pursuits. to carry out the policy of the Government regarding

Second. It being deemed the best policy as far as possible to make the employment and subsistence of negroes a matter to be left to private enterprise, plantations will be placed in possession of such persons as pecuniary responsibility, and in lieu of rent a tax will the commissioners shall deem of good character and be collected upon the product of the land, payable to such agents as the Treasury Department shall desig nate, care being taken to secure as far as possible the just rights of the employers and employed; in all cases the negroes will be furnished with enough clothing for comfort in advance of their earnings, in consequence of their extreme destitution, and in no case will negroes be subjected to corporal punishment by the lash or other cruel and usual modes.

Third. Upon the occupancy of plantations inspec tors will visit each plantation and take an inventory of all the property upon the estate. Crops yet un gathered will be turned over to be gathered by the fessee upon such terms as shall secure to the Govern grain, &c., will be taken possession of by the Govern ment its fair share, while all movable property, stock, ment, or sold to the lessee, if he so desires, at their appraised value, payable out of the proceeds of the plantation in the fall; the appraisers to be appointed the Government. by the commissioners, unless otherwise designated by

Fourth, After the lessee shall have taken possession of the plantation, as many negroes of average quality as he may desire may be turned over to him upon the bonds to employ them until the 1st of February, 1864, order of the commissioners, the lessee entering into and to feed, clothe, and treat humanely all the negroes thus turned over, the clothing to be deducted from their wages, and to be furnished at cost.

Fifth. If it shall be found impracticable, in conse quence of the lateness of the season, to find persons of sufficient character and responsibility to give em ployment to all the negroes coming within the lines of the army, the commissioners may appoint superinten dents, under whose supervision the soil may be culti vated for the exclusive benefit of the Government, or in their judgment shall be best adapted to the welfare may have the plantations worked upon such terms as of the negroes, taking care that in all plans adopted the negroes shall be self-sustaining, and not become a charge upon the Government.

For able-bodied men over 15 years of age, $7 per Sixth. The wages paid for labor shall be as follows: month; for able-bodied women over 15 years of age,