Convince them that the Government actually needs their money, and they would serve it barefooted and on half-rations, and without a dollar--for a time.

But, unfortunately, they see white soldiers beside them, whom they know to be in no way their superiors for any military service, receiving hundreds of dollars for re-enlisting for this impoverished Government, which can only pay seven dollars out of thirteen to its black regiments.
And they see, on the other hand, those colored men who refused to volunteer as soldiers, and who have found more honest paymasters than the United States Government, now exulting in well-filled pockets, and able to buy the little homesteads the soldiers need, and to turn the soldiers' families into the streets.

Is this a school for self-sacrificing patriotism?
I should not speak thus urgently were it not becoming manifest that there is to be no promptness of action in Congress, even as regards the future pay of colored soldiers,--and that there is especial danger of the whole matter of _arrears_ going by default Should it be so, it will be a repudiation more ungenerous than any which Jefferson Davis advocated or Sydney Smith denounced.

It will sully with dishonor all the nobleness of this opening page of history, and fix upon the North a brand of meanness worse than either Southerner or Englishman has yet dared to impute.

The mere delay in the fulfillment of this contract has already inflicted untold suffering, has impaired discipline, has relaxed loyalty, and has begun to implant a feeling of sullen distrust in the very regiments whose early career solved the problem of the nation, created a new army, and made peaceful emancipation possible.
T.W.HIGGINSON, Colonel commanding 1st S.C.Vols.
BEAUFORT, S.C., January 22, 1864.
HEADQUARTERS FIRST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS, BEAUFORT, S.C., Sunday, February 14, 1864.
To the Editor of the _New York Times_: May I venture to call your attention to the great and cruel injustice which is impending over the brave men of this regiment?
They have been in military service for over a year, having volunteered, every man, without a cent of bounty, on the written pledge of the War Department that they should receive the same pay and rations with white soldiers.
This pledge is contained in the written instructions of Brigadier-General Saxton, Military Governor, dated August 25, 1862.