after
dangerous adventures, and are happiest when allowed to seek them. Every
commander gradually finds out who these men are, and habitually uses
them; certainly I had such, and I remember with delight their bearing,
their coolness, and their dash. Some of them were negroes, some
mulattoes. One of them would have passed for white, with brown hair
and blue eyes, while others were so black you could hardly see their
features. These picked men varied in other respects too; some were
neat and well-drilled soldiers, while others were slovenly, heedless
fellows,--the despair of their officers at inspection, their pride on a
raid. They were the natural scouts and rangers of the regiment; they had
the two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which Napoleon thought so rare.
The mass of the regiment rose to the same level under excitement, and
were more excitable, I think, than whites, but neither more nor less
courageous.

Perhaps the best proof of a good average of courage among them was in
the readiness they always showed for any special enterprise. I do
not remember ever to have had the slightest difficulty in obtaining
volunteers, but rather in keeping down the number. The previous pages
include many illustrations of this, as well as of then: endurance of
pain and discomfort. For instance, one of my lieutenants, a very daring
Irishman, who had served for eight years as a sergeant of regular
artillery in Texas, Utah, and South Carolina, said he had never been
engaged in anything so risky as our raid up the St. Mary's. But in truth
it seems to me a mere absurdity to deliberately argue the question of
courage, as applied to men among whom I waked and slept, day and night,
for so many months together. As well might he who has been wandering for
years upon the desert, with a Bedouin escort, discuss the courage of the
men whose tents have been his shelter and whose spears his guard. We,
their officers, did not go there to teach lessons, but to receive them.
There were more than a hundred men in the ranks who had voluntarily met
more dangers in their escape from slavery than any of my young captains
had incurred in all their lives.

There was a family named Wilson, I remember, of which we had several
representatives. Three or four brothers had planned an escape from the
interior to our lines; they finally decided that the youngest should
stay and take care of the old mother; the rest, with their sister and
her children, came in a "d