They are no longer slaves; many of whom have been many years free men, and a large number were never slaves.

They are a hardy, robust class of men; very many of them, men of superior intellect; and men who feel deeply the wrongs they have endured.

Driven as they have been from their native land; unprotected by the government under which they were born, and would gladly have died,--they would in all probability, in case of a rupture, take up arms in defense of the government which has protected them and the country of their adoption.

England could this day, very readily collect a regiment of stalwart colored men, who, having felt the oppression of our laws, would fight with a will not inferior to that which actuated our revolutionary forefathers.
And what inducement, I ask, have colored men to defend with their lives the United States in any case; and what is there to incite them to deeds of bravery?
Wherever men are called upon to take up arms in defense of a country, there is always a consciousness of approaching wrong and oppression, which arouses their patriotism and incites to deeds of daring.

They look abroad over fields of their own cultivation; they behold too, churches, schools, and various institutions, provided by their labor, for generations yet to come; they see their homes, their cherished hearthstone, about to be desecrated, and their wives and little ones, with their aged sires, exposed to the oppression of a ruthless foe.