elbow, a well-trained sergeant
behind him, and a captain or a colonel whose voice means something to
give commands.

This reference to the colored troops suggests the false impression,
still held by many, that special opposition to this important military
organization has been made by regular officers. There is no justice in
this. While it is very probable that regular officers, as a class, may
have had stronger prejudices on this point than others have held, yet it
is to be remembered that the chief obstacles have not come from them,
nor from military men of any kind, but from civilians at home. Nothing
has been more remarkable than the facility with which the expected
aversion of the army everywhere vanished before the admirable behavior
of the colored troops, and the substantial value of the reinforcements
they brought. When it comes to the simple question whether a soldier
shall go on duty every night or every other night, he is not critical as
to beauty of complexion in the soldier who relieves him.

Some regular officers may have been virulently opposed to the employment
of negroes as soldiers, though the few instances which I have known have
been far more than compensated by repeated acts of the most substantial
kindness from many others. But I never have met one who did not express
contempt for the fraud thus far practised by Government on a portion of
these troops, by refusing to pay them the wages which the Secretary of
War had guarantied. This is a wrong which, but for good discipline,
would have long since converted our older colored regiments into a mob
of mutineers, and which, while dishonestly saving the Government a few
thousand dollars, has virtually sacrificed hundreds of thousands in its
discouraging effect upon enlistments, at a time when the fate of the
nation may depend upon a few regiments more or less. It is in vain for
national conventions to make capital by denouncing massacres like that
of Fort Pillow, and yet ignore this more deliberate injustice for which
some of their own members are in part responsible. The colored soldiers
will take their own risk of capture and maltreatment very readily,
(since they must take it on themselves at any rate,) if the Government
will let its justice begin at home, and pay them their honest earnings.
It is of little consequence to a dying man whether any one else is to
die by retaliation, but it is of momentous consequence whether his wife
and family are to