therein
described. This could not proceed from my prejudices as an abolitionist,
for they would have led me the other way, and indeed I had once written
a little essay to show the brutalizing influences of slavery. I learned
to think that we abolitionists had underrated the suffering produced
by slavery among the negroes, but had overrated the demoralization. Or
rather, we did not know how the religious temperament of the negroes
had checked the demoralization. Yet again, it must be admitted that this
temperament, born of sorrow and oppression, is far more marked in the
slave than in the native African.

Theorize as we may, there was certainly in our camp an average tone of
propriety which all visitors noticed, and which was not created, but
only preserved by discipline. I was always struck, not merely by the
courtesy of the men, but also by a certain sober decency of language.
If a man had to report to me any disagreeable fact, for instance, he
was sure to do it with gravity and decorum, and not blurt it out in an
offensive way. And it certainly was a significant fact that the ladies
of our camp, when we were so fortunate as to have such guests, the young
wives, especially, of the adjutant and quartermaster, used to go among
the tents when the men were off duty, in order to hear their big pupils
read and spell, without the slightest fear of annoyance. I do not mean
direct annoyance or insult, for no man who valued his life would have
ventured that in presence of the others, but I mean the annoyance of
accidentally seeing or hearing improprieties not intended for them. They
both declared that they would not have moved about with anything like
the same freedom in any white camp they had ever entered, and it
always roused their indignation to hear the negro race called brutal or
depraved.

This came partly from natural good manners, partly from the habit of
deference, partly from ignorance of the refined and ingenious evil which
is learned in large towns; but a large part came from their strongly
religious temperament. Their comparative freedom from swearing,
for instance,--an abstinence which I fear military life did not
strengthen,--was partly a matter of principle. Once I heard one of them
say to another, in a transport of indignation, "Ha-a-a, boy, s'pose I no
be a Christian, I cuss you sol"--which was certainly drawing pretty hard
upon the bridle. "Cuss," however, was a generic term for all manner
of evil speaking