JULY 30, 1863:
President
Lincoln, horrified by the murders of captured U.S.C.T. soldiers at the hands of
Southerners, issues an Order of Retaliation. Despite the harshness of the
language, Lincoln rarely resorted to capital punishment in practice:
“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 the usages and customs of war as carried
on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment 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 civilization 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 anyone because of his color, the offense 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.”
An African-American woman from Buffalo, New York, writes to
President Lincoln regarding her son who fought at Battery Wagner:
Excellent Sir My good friend says I must write to you and
she will send it My son went in the
54th regiment. I am a colored woman and
my son was strong and able as any to fight for his country and the colored
people have as much to fight for as any.
My father was a Slave and escaped from Louisiana before I was born morn
forty years agone I have but poor
edication but I never went to schol, but I know just as well as any what is
right between man and man. Now I know it
is right that a colored man should go and fight for his country, and so ought
to a white man. I know that a colored
man ought to run no greater risques than a white, his pay is no greater his
obligation to fight is the same. So why
should not our enemies be compelled to treat him the same, Made to do it.
My son fought at Fort
Wagoner but thank God he was not taken prisoner, as many were I thought of this thing before I let my boy
go but then they said Mr. Lincoln will never let them sell our colored soldiers
for slaves, if they do he will get them
back quck he will rettallyate and stop
it. Now Mr Lincoln dont you think you
oght to stop this thing and make them do the same by the colored men they have lived in idleness all their lives
on stolen labor and made savages of the colored people, but they now are so
furious because they are proving themselves to be men, such as have come away
and got some edication. It must not be
so. You must put the rebels to work in
State prisons to making shoes and things, if they sell our colored soldiers,
till they let them all go. And give
their wounded the same treatment. it
would seem cruel, but their no other way, and a just man must do hard things
sometimes, that shew him to be a great man.
They tell me some do you will take back the Proclamation, don't do it.
When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that action of
yours will make the Angels sing your praises I know it. Ought one man to own another, law for or not, who made the law, surely the poor slave did
not. so it is wicked, and a horrible
Outrage, there is no sense in it,
because a man has lived by robbing all his life and his father before
him, should he complain because the stolen things found on him are taken. Robbing the colored people of their labor is
but a small part of the robbery their
souls are almost taken, they are made bruits of often. You know all about this
Will you see that the
colored men fighting now, are fairly treated.
You ought to do this, and do it at once, Not let the thing run
along meet it quickly and manfully, and
stop this, mean cowardly cruelty. We
poor oppressed ones, appeal to you, and ask fair play. Yours for Christs sake
Hannah Johnson.
[In another
handwriting] Hon. Mr. Lincoln The above speaks for itself Carrie Coburn
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