All of the
colored regiments were thus happily placed so that they should be in
pleasant soldierly competition with the very best troops the country
ever put in the field, and this arrangement at the start proves how
strongly the black regular had entrenched himself in the confidence of
our great commanders.
Thus sailed from Port Tampa the major part of our little army of
trained and seasoned soldiers, representative of the skill and daring
of the nation.[14] In physique, almost every man was an athlete, and
while but few had seen actual war beyond an occasional skirmish with
Indians, all excepting the few volunteers, had passed through a long
process of training in the various details of marching, camping and
fighting in their annual exercises in minor tactics. For the first
time in history the nation is going abroad, by its army, to occupy the
territory of a foreign foe, in a contest with a trans-Atlantic power.
The unsuccessful invasions of Canada during the Revolutionary War and
the War of 1812 can hardly be brought in comparison with this movement
over sea. The departure of Decatur with his nine ships of war to the
Barbary States had in view only the establishment of proper civil
relations between those petty, half-civilized countries and the United
States.
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