control: they always wish to pass by the company officer, and deal
with me personally for everything. General Saxton notices the same
thing with the people on the plantations as regards himself. I suppose
this proceeds partly from the old habit of appealing to the master
against the overseer. Kind words would cost the master nothing, and he
could easily put off any non-fulfilment upon the overseer. Moreover,
the negroes have acquired such constitutional distrust of white
people, that it is perhaps as much as they can do to trust more than
one person at a tune. Meanwhile this constant personal intercourse is
out of the question in a well-ordered regiment; and the remedy for it
is to introduce by degrees more and more of system, so that their
immediate officers will become all-sufficient for the daily routine.

It is perfectly true (as I find everybody takes for granted) that the
first essential for an officer of colored troops is to gain their
confidence. But it is equally true, though many persons do not
appreciate it, that the admirable methods and proprieties of the regular
army are equally available for all troops, and that the sublimest
philanthropist, if he does not appreciate this, is unfit to command them.

Another childlike attribute in these men, which is less agreeable, is a
sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel
to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off
flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I
should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs,
they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured
city with them than with white troops, for they would be more
subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine
sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to
blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I