A Stillness at Appomattox (110 page)

A
Connecticut
soldier
who
watched
contrabands
at
work unloading
ships
at
the
Alexandria
piers
noticed
that
whenever
there
was
a
breathing
spell
some
of
the
men
would stretch
out
on
the
nearest
pile
of
barrels
or
boxes,
take
out
a spelling
book,
and
laboriously
study
it.
As
a
general
thing, he
said,
they
worked
very
hard:
"All
they
want
to
encourage them
is
talk
of
freedom,
and
then
the
dirt
will
fly
high
and fast."
They
disliked
to
be
called
"contrabands,"
and
when they
were
made
soldiers
they
were
intensely
proud
of
their status
as
combat
men.
A
white
woman
who
visited
her
husband
at
army
headquarters
near
Petersburg
told
about
meeting
a
wounded
Negro
soldier
who
was
trudging
along
the road
toward
the
base
hospital
at
City
Point,
loaded
down with
his
musket,
cartridge
box,
and
haversack.
Her
husband told
him
to
throw
his
load
away,
but
the
man
begged
to
be allowed
to
carry
it
all
the
way
to
the
hospital:
"I
don't
want de
fellows
at
de
hospital
to
mistake
me
for
a
teamster."
²⁸

A
Regular
Army
enlisted
man
watched
some
of
Ferrero's men
marching
up
toward
Petersburg
and
noted
that
many
of them
had
taken
off
their
shoes
and
were
carrying
them
on their
bayonets,
going
along
barefooted.
In
the
evening
he went
to
their
camp
and
observed
evening
roll
call:
"There were
so
many
Jacksons
and
Johnsons
that
the
first
sergeant numbered
them
as
high
as
'Johnson
Number
Five.'
They
appeared
to
be
very
proud
of
being
soldiers
and
serving
with white
troops."
²⁴

From
the
beginning
it
was
realized
that
the
effectiveness of
colored
troops
would
depend
largely
on
the
way
the
regiments
were
officered,
and
what
would
now
be
called
an
officer-candidate
school
was
set
up
in
Philadelphia.
Non-commissioned
officers
and
privates
in
the
Army
of
the
Potomac could
apply
for
admission
to
this
school,
and
if
recommended by
their
own
officers
and
approved
by
an
examining
board they
would
get
thirty
days
training
and
then
would
be
commissioned
to
command
colored
soldiers.
The
rank
and
file seems
to
have
been
of
two
minds
about
this
arrangement. Some
felt
that
it
was
a
good
idea,
that
the
standards
were high
and
the
training
thorough—one
man
said
he
knew
colonels
in
white
regiments
who
could
not
get
an
examining board
recommendation
for
a
second
lieutenancy—but
others believed
that
the
examinations
and
instructions
"were
not practical,
but
scholastic
and
theoretical,"
and
that
most
of the
men
who
were
commissioned
were
not
up
to
their
jobs.
²⁵

Certain
it
was
that
these
strange
new
regiments
needed good
leadership.
They
were
reluctant
to
take
orders
from non-coms
of
their
own
color—it
was
common
to
hear
the
complaint,
"I
don't
want
him
to
play
de
white
man
over
me"— and
a
company
commander
had
to
be
careful
to
treat
his sergeants
with
formal
military
courtesy,
always
addressing them
by
their
titles
and
in
general
following
precise
Regular Army
routine.
The
colored
enlisted
man
who
had
a
complaint
or
problem
was
quite
likely
to
try
to
by-pass
his
company
officers
and
go
direct
to
his
colonel,
and
one
of
the
colonels
meditated
on
the
reason
for
this:
"The
Negroes
have acquired
such
a
constitutional
distrust
of
white
people
that
it is
perhaps
as
much
as
they
can
do
to
trust
more
than
one person
at
a
time."
He
added
that
in
training
and
disciplining the
men
it
was
vital
"to
make
them
feel
as
remote
as
possible
from
the
plantation,"
and
said
that
the
habit
of
obedience was
worthless
unless
the
officer
managed
to
instill
a
stout feeling
of
self-respect
along
with
it.
An
officer
of
polished manners
could
do
better
with
colored
troops
than
with
white volunteers,
who
preferred
a
certain
roughness
of
manner in
their
officers.
²⁶

In
camp,
the
colored
men
made
excellent
soldiers.
They picked
up
the
drill
quickly,
learning
it
more
easily
than
white recruits
did.
The
different
companies
in
a
regiment
would vie
with
each
other
for
excellence
on
the
parade
ground,
and sometimes
would
get
into
furious
fist
fights
while
arguing
as to
which
company
was
the
best.
During
that
Carolina
expedition,
where
local
contrabands
were
organized
into
a
regiment,
there
was
one
day
a
parade
of
colored
soldiers
through the
city
of
Beaufort,
with
the
band
of
a
Maine
regiment leading
the
way,
and
it
was
a
big
experience.
A
colored
sergeant
said
afterward:
"When
dat
band
wheel
in
before
us and
march
on—my
Godl
I
quit
dis
world
altogedder!"
And
a private
related:
"We
didn't
look
to
de
right
nor
to
de
left.
I didn't
see
nottin'
in
Beaufort.
Every
step
was
worth
half
a dollar."