The first day of
freedom for these men was passed in uniform and with a gun. Among
these Negroes, just wrested from slavery, their scholarly commander,
Colonel Higginson, could find many whom he judged well fitted by
nature to command.
"Afterwards I had excellent battalion drills," he writes, "without a
single white officer, by way of experiment, putting each company under
a sergeant, and going through the most difficult movements, such as
division columns and oblique squares. And as to actual discipline, it
is doing no injustice to the line-officers of the regiment to say that
none of them received from the men more implicit obedience than
Color-Sergeant Rivers. * * * It always seemed to me an insult to those
brave men to have novices put over their heads, on the ground of color
alone, and the men felt it the more keenly as they remained longer in
the service. There were more than seven hundred enlisted men in the
regiment, when mustered out after more than three years' service. The
ranks had been kept full by enlistment, but there were only fourteen
line-officers instead of the full thirty. The men who should have
filled these vacancies were doing duty as sergeants in the ranks."[29]
Numerous expeditions were constantly on foot in the Department of the
South, having for their object the liberation of slaves still held to
service in neighborhoods remote from the Union camps, or to capture
supplies and munitions of war.
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