March 24.
Tonight the Paul Jones has returned from Palatka, bringing a single contraband, and the intelligence that all the slaves have been run back into the interior. The fact is, if we are ever to get black soldiers, we must make a big hole through the rebel lines so that the blacks can run back to us. Every day of waiting here is a day of strength to our fortifications, but a day of weakness to our purpose. We need nothing so much as black recruits and it seems to me that if the proclamation of emancipation is ever to be anything more than a dead letter, it must be made so before many weeks. Were the North an anti-slavery unit I should not feel at all impatient, but I believe we have more to dread from traitors at home than from their friends who fight against us here. Possibly public opinion may not continue on its anti-slavery decline at home, but if today we had fifty thousand black troops, I should feel more certain of its returning to health. I am perfectly satisfied that there is nothing in this world so dreadful to the rebels as the enlistment of their slaves in the federal service. They will resort to every possible means to prevent our getting recruits.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June, 1910: February 1910. p. 378
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