W.E.B Dubois (in Black reconstruction) “In December, 1863, Morgan led Negro troops in the battle of Nashville. He declared a new chapter in the history of liberty had been written. “It had been shown that marching under a flag of freedom, animated by a love of liberty, even the slave becomes a man and a hero.” Between eight and ten thousand Negro troops took part in the battles around Nashville, all of them from slave states. When General Thomas rode over the battlefield, and saw the bodies of colored men side by side with the foremost on the very works of the enemy, he turned to his staff, saying: “Gentlemen, the question is settled: Negroes will fight.” How extraordinary, and what a tribute to ignorance and religious hypocrisy, is the fact that in the minds of most people, even those of liberals, only murder makes men. The slave pleaded; he was humble; he protected the women of the South, and the world ignored him. “The problem is solved. The Negro is a man, a soldier, a hero.”