On this date 150 years ago, the Confederate House Delegates at the capital in Richmond, Virginia, entered into a debate concerning free blacks' enlistment in the Southern army. The "Examiner", a Richmond newspaper, exhorted citizens to support the cause by re-enrollment in the army and a stronger commitment to the struggle between the North and South. Some observers were worried that Southerners were becoming tired and were "not sufficiently alive to the necessity of exertion."