for white, and he always keeps away from the negroes."

Certainly no such suspicion had ever crossed my mind.

I have noticed one man in the regiment who would easily pass for
white,--a little sickly drummer, aged fifty at least, with brown eyes
and reddish hair, who is said to be the son of one of our commodores.
I have seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair, or fairer, among fugitive
slaves, but they were usually young children. It touched me far more
to see this man, who had spent more than half a lifetime in this low
estate, and for whom it now seemed too late to be anything but a
"nigger." This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with
them as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred
slaveholders. They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de
nigger houses, Sah," is the universal impulse of sociability, when
they wish to cross the lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two
hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in
which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated
like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes
with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is always
difficult to sustain, even in white regiments. "He needn't try to play
de white man ober me," was the protest of a soldier against his
corporal the other day. To counteract this I have often to remind them
that they do not obey their officers because they are white, but
because they are their officers; and guard duty is an admirable school
for this, because they readily understand that the sergeant or
corporal of the guard has for the time more authority than any
commissioned officer who is not on duty. It is necessary also for
their superiors to treat the non-commissioned officers with careful
courtesy, and I often caution the line officers never to call them