That
was
the
sticking
point.
The
average
Northern
white man
of
that
era
might
refuse
to
associate
with
the
Negro
and hold
himself
to
be
immeasurably
the
Negro's
superior—the superiority,
of
course,
grew
out
of
the
natural
order
of
things, and
need
not
actually
be
proved—but
there
was
a
war
on and
the
country
needed
soldiers,
and
if
Federal
corpses
were the
price
of
victory,
it
hardly
paid
to
be
finicky
about
the original
color
of
the
corpses'
skins.
The
real
trouble
lay
in the
assumption
that
while
it
was
all
right
to
let
the
Negro
get shot
it
was
foolish
to
expect
him
to
do
any
serious
fighting first.
A
young
officer
who
left
his
place
in
a
white
regiment
to become
colonel
of
a
colored
regiment
was
frankly
told
by
a staff
officer
that
"we
do
not
want
any
nigger
soldiers
in
the Army
of
the
Potomac,"
and
his
general
took
him
aside
to say:
"I
am
sorry
to
have
you
leave
my
command,
and
still more
sorry
that
you
are
going
to
serve
with
Negroes.
I
think it
is
a
disgrace
to
the
army
to
make
soldiers
of
them."
The general
added
that
he
felt
this
way
because
he
was
sure
that colored
soldiers
just
would
not
fight,
16
Most
men
felt
the
same
way.
In
support
of
the
belief
it was
pointed
out
that
in
many
years
of
American
bondage there
had
never
been
a
really
serious
slave
revolt.
Even
John Brown
himself,
carrying
fire
and
sword
below
the
Potomac, had
been
able
to
recruit
no
more
than
a
dazed
corporal's guard
of
colored
followers.
Surely
this
proved
that
even though
slaves
might
not
be
happy
with
their
lot
they
had
no real
combativeness
in
them?
There
might
be
flaws
in
the
argument.
It
quite
overlooked the
fact
that
for
many
years
the
fabulous
underground
railroad
had
been
relieving
the
explosive
pressures
the
slave
system
had
been
building
up,
and
had
been
in
fact
a
great
deterrent
to
slave
revolt,
for
it
took
out
of
slavery
precisely
the daring,
energetic,
intelligent
slaves
who
might
have
planned and
led
an
uprising
if
they
had
been
unable
to
escape.
16
The argument
also
overlooked
the
fact
that
if
American
slaves rarely
made
any
trouble
the
people
who
owned
them
were always
mortally
afraid
that
they
would
do
so
some
day.
The gloomy
island
of
Haiti
was
not
far
enough
away
to
let
anyone
forget
that
black
men
there
had
risen
in
one
of
the
most bloody,
desperate
revolts
in
human
history,
winning
their own
freedom
and
practically
annihilating
the
master
race
in the
process.
Oddly
enough,
the
general
belief
that
colored men
would
not
fight
ran
parallel
with
a
conviction
that
they would
fight
with
primitive
viciousness
if
they
ever
got
a chance.
Yet
whatever
prejudice
might
say,
the
hard
fact
now
was that
colored
men
were
being
enlisted
as
soldiers
in
large numbers
and
that
there
were
times
when
it
was
impossible to
avoid
using
them
in
combat.
The
use
of
Hinks's
division was
an
example.
They
had
stormed
rifle
pits
and
captured guns,
and
although
Hancock's
veterans
saw
in
that
fact
nothing
more
than
evidence
that
the
Confederacy
had
only
second-rate
troops
in
line,
Baldy
Smith—who
was
far
from
being prejudiced
in
their
favor—said
afterward
that
Negro
soldiers under
certain
circumstances
might
be
as
good
as
any.
17
No
matter
how
it
might
use
them,
however,
the
army
certainly
had
not
assimilated
them.
It
had
not
tried
to
and
if
it had
tried
it
would
have
failed,
and
it
did
not
matter
much anyway
for
it
was
no
longer
possible
for
this
army
to
be
homogeneous.
It
had
become
a
representative
cross
section
of an
extremely
mixed
population;
and
now,
as
a
final
step,
it contained
long
columns
of
colored
men
whose
memories,
as one
of
their
officers
said,
were
"a
vast
bewildered
chaos
of Jewish
history
and
biography,"
the
residue
of
chanted
spirituals
and
the
preaching
of
untaught
plantation
clergymen, men
who
in
their
innocence
attributed
every
historic
event to
the
doings
of
the
great
Moses.
18
When
Ferrero's
dark
battalions
came
up
to
the
sheltered area
just
behind
the
front,
they
added
a
new
dimension
to army
life
and
gave
it
a
strange
wild
flavor.
Always
there
had been
groups
of
soldiers
to
sit
around
campfires
in
the
evening,
singing
about
their
homesickness
and
the
girls
they wanted
to
get
back
to,
about
their
comradeship,
and,
occasionally,
about
their
patriotism,
but
when
these
black
soldiers sang
there
was
a
haunting
and
a
mystery
in
the
air.
For
if the
white
soldier
looked
back
with
profound
longing
to
something
precious
that
had
been
left
far
behind,
the
colored soldier's
homesickness
seemed
to
be
for
a
place
where
he had
never
been
at
all.
He
had
nothing
to
look
back
to.
Everything
he
could
dream
of
lay
ahead
of
him,
and
his
dreams were
apocalyptic,
not
to
be
expressed
in
ordinary
words.