onel
Sammis, one of the leading Florida refugees. Two white companions came
with him, who also appeared to be retainers of the Colonel, and I asked
them to dine. Being likewise refugees, they had stories to tell, and
were quite agreeable: one was English born, the other Floridian, a dark,
sallow Southerner, very well bred. After they had gone, the Colonel
himself appeared, I told him that I had been entertaining his white
friends, and after a while he quietly let out the remark,--

"Yes, one of those white friends of whom you speak is a boy raised on
one of my plantations; he has travelled with me to the North, and passed
for white, and he always keeps away from the negroes."

Certainly no such suspicion had ever crossed my mind.

I have noticed one man in the regiment who would easily pass for
white,--a little sickly drummer, aged fifty at least, with brown eyes
and reddish hair, who is said to be the son of one of our commodores.
I have seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair, or fairer, among fugitive
slaves, but they were usually young children. It touched me far more
to see this man, who had spent more than half a lifetime in this
low estate, and for whom it now seemed too late to be anything but a
"nigger." This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with them
as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred slaveholders.
They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger houses, Sah,"
is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the
lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger,"
is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is
limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle.
This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the
non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in
white regiments. "He needn't try to play de white man ober me," was the
protest of a soldier against his corporal the other day. To counteract
this I have often to remind them that they do not obey their officers
because they are white, but because they are their officers; and guard
duty is an admirable school for this, because they readily understand
that the sergeant or corporal of the guard has for the time more
authority than any commissioned officer who is not on duty. It is
necessary also for their superiors to treat the non-commissioned
officers with careful courtesy, and I often caution th