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By Root 1060 0

the slave as soldier was made by Colonel Higginson, whose South Carolina regiment consisted almost exclusively of recently held bondsmen. He preferred them as soldiers, he explained, because of “their greater docility and affectionateness” and “the powerful stimulus” which prompted men to fight for their own homes and families. The demeanor of his men, moreover, he considered superior to “that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut.” But Higginson refused to argue, as did some Union officers, that slavery with its emphasis on submission and obedience had prepared slaves for military service. “Experience proved the contrary,” he insisted. “The more strongly we marked the difference between the slave and the soldier, the better for the regiment. One half of military duty lies in obedience, the other half in self-respect. A soldier without self-respect is worthless.”81

The prevailing assessment of the black soldier in combat was that he conducted himself as well as the white man. That in itself was a substantial concession. “They seem to have behaved just as well and as badly as the rest and to have suffered more severely,” concluded a white officer who but two years earlier had warned that the use of blacks as soldiers would be a serious blunder (like “Hamlet’s ape, who broke his neck to try conclusions”). Some black soldiers deserted under fire, though proportionately fewer than in the white regiments. Much like the white soldiers, blacks complained of camp conditions, oppressive officers, and punishments out of proportion to the offenses committed—and some blacks argued that racial discrimination aggravated each of these grievances. Like the white soldiers, blacks suffered the moments of disillusionment, frustration, and weariness that are characteristic of any war, particularly a struggle as agonizing and brutal as the Civil War. “More than one half of our whole command was … sacrificed without gaining any particular object,” a black soldier remarked after a battle in which 231 of the 420 men in his outfit had been killed or wounded. The same observation might have been made by the common soldier of any war in history.82

Both white and black soldiers shared a capacity for incredible valor (seventeen black soldiers and four black sailors were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor), battle fatigue, and outright fear. “I prayed on the battle field some of the best prayers I ever prayed in my life,” one black soldier readily confessed, and “made God some of the finest promises that ever were made.” And for some blacks, as for some whites, the level of violence and inhumanity reached in this war was too much to bear. “I sho’ wishes lots of times I never run off from de plantation. I begs de General not to send me on any more battles, and he says I’s de coward and sympathizes with de South. But I tells him I jes’ couldn’t stand to see all dem men layin’ dere dyin’ and hollerin’ and beggin’ for help and a drink of water, and blood everywhere you looks.” But when it came down to the real test, most of the black soldiers fought, and many of them died, and that was all the evidence most observers required. Nor did the black soldier who had been a slave evince any hesitation about facing his former master in the field of combat. “Our masters may talk now all dey choose,” a black soldier replied when told that slaves loved their old masters too much to fight them; “but one ting’s sartin,—dey don’t dare to try us. Jess put de guns into our hans, and you’ll soon see dat we not only knows how to shoot, but who to shoot. My master wouldn’t be wuff much ef I was a soldier.”83

The white Yankee soldier gradually grew accustomed to the sight of uniformed blacks. In some regions, the initial hostility subsided when black regiments relieved the whites of fatigue and garrison duties and did a disproportionate share of the heavy labor. “Never fear that soldiers will be found objecting to negro enlistments,” a Massachusetts private noted. “One hour’s digging in Louisiana clay