ight have given him shoulder-straps, but the war ended
without authorization of law for that step. At first they were received,
under an act of Congress that allowed each one, without regard to rank,
ten dollars per month, three dollars thereof to be retained for clothing
and equipments. I think it was in May, 1864, when the act was passed
equalizing the pay, but not opening the doors to promotion.

Under an act of the Confederate Congress, making it a crime punishable
with death for any white person to train Negroes or mulattoes to arms,
or aid them in any military enterprise, and devoting the Negro caught
under arms to the tender mercies of the "present or future laws of the
State" in which caught, a large number of _promotions_ were made by the
way of a rope and a tree along the first year of the Negro's service. (I
can even recall one instance as late as April, 1865, though it had been
long before then generally discontinued.)

What the Negro did, how he did it, and where, it would take volumes to
properly record, I can however give but briefest mention to a few of the
many evidences of his fitness for the duties of the war, and his aid to
the cause of the Union.

The first fighting done by organized Negro troops appears to have been
done by Company A, 1st South Carolina Negro Regiment, at St. Helena
Island, November 3 to 10, 1862, while participating in an expedition
along the coast of Georgia and Florida under Lieutenant-Colonel O. T.
Beard, of the 48th New York Infantry, who says in his report:

"The colored men fought with astonishing coolness and bravery. I found
them all I could desire,--more than I had hoped. They behaved
gloriously, and deserve all praise."

The testimony thus inaugurated runs like a cord of gold through the web
and woof of the history of the Negro as a soldier from that date to
their final charge, the last made at Clover Hill, Va., April 9, 1865.

Necessarily the first actions in which the Negro bore a part commanded
most attention. Friends and enemies were looking eagerly to see how they
would acquit themselves, and so it comes to pass that the names of Fort
Wagner, Olustee, Millikens Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Pillow are as
familiar as Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh and Gettysburg, and while those
first experiences were mostly severe reverses, they were by that very
fact splendid exemplifiers of the truth that the Negroes could be relied
upon to fight under the most adverse circumstance