June 12, 1863, Corinth Chanticleer (Corinth, Ms)
Camp 1st Ala. Loyal Inft.
Near Corinth, Miss. June 8th, 1863.
Mr. Editor:–You ask for information about the colored regiment, how we get along, and what we think of it. Well, I must say that with all my researches and posting before and during the war, that I was not prepared to believe the half. These men, sir, are determined to become the best soldiers in the world. Mark the prediction. They will end this war, and in less than ten years will form the bulk of our “National Guard”–the basis of our large standing army we will, for years, be compelled to keep in our sickly southern sea cost and river Forts. Mark the prediction again.
Why do we think so?
Because, in the first place, they are physically better adapted to the arduous duties of a soldiers life and hardships. The examining surgeons pronounced some of them to be the finest specimens of physical perfection they ever saw. (They were stripped in “regular” style.)
In the 2d place they know nothing but perfect obedience, the first great requisite in a soldier. They pay better attention than our white soldiers, and rarely ever make a mistake when a movement is properly explained beforehand.
3d. They are natural imitators and learn the manual of arms with surprising facility and quickness. There are boys here fifteen and sixteen years of age who can take up a musket and execute the different maneuvers of the Ellsworth Zouaves almost with the rapidity of lightning, a knowledge of […..] where they had been serving as waiters.
4th. They are the most thoroughly and intensely loyal clans of people in the whole country, north or south. There is not a copperhead to be found among them, and very little inducement for them to desert to the rebels.
They are more intelligent, independent and manly than the poor whites of the country from the fact, probably, that they enjoyed the “fat of the land” with their masters, whilst the poor white trash were crowded into the mountains to starve. Most of them are prepared for their freedom and fully understand its responsibilities.
That they will fight has already been demonstrated, and we have no doubt with proper officers, they would commit less depredations when on a march than our own men. When they are drilled we would be happy to meet an equal number of their copperhead slanderers, whose traitorous and cowardly carcasses they are saving from the draft.
5th. They make the best fatigue men in the world. Last week our seven hundred men, besides the hundred or more men called for almost daily to unload cars in town, and as many more for camp, corral and farm guards, performed more hard labor on the barracks than any two white regiments at the Post, we dare say. And yet we are expected to be half drilled by the time. Does Gen. Doge, who witnessed our Battalion movements Saturday evening, know that we had not so much as a squad drill all last week? All our energies are lad out upon the barracks at present.
And now in conclusion we would just say that we want every one to dispel all foolish prejudices about colored regiments and think reasonably. Slavery is dead. It has committed suicide. We are now making the best possible disposition of these people. When this work is accomplished, the war will be done, and not before. The hand of Almighty God is working with us. We want to take these men, as soon as possible, where they can save the bosoms of our intelligent northern boys and let them go to their homes and friends. This is right and proper. We intend to rescue these people from adultery, ignorance and barbarism, and elevate them to the extent of the capacities which God has given them. We wish to redeem our land from the merited stigma of inconsistency–of sending Missionaries and teachers to foreign lands, whilst it protects and nourishes ignorance and barbarism in its own midst. We propose to make the South a home, not a prison or house of torture, and then no negroes will wish to go north to tempt the copperheads to amalgamation, (for by the way their fears about amalgamation are not groundless, as the copperheads, in and out of the army, are the worst amalgamaters in the world.) Ah, sir, this is a great missionary work. These people, doomed by two centuries of cruel State Legislation to adultery and ignorance, are now to make a great stride towards civilization. No man should ask for, or be permitted to receive a position in these regiments who has not, and has not had, his heart and soul in the work. Away with your new converts–these cowardly sneaks who have made capital out of the woes and tears of the race, but now, since the current has been wrested and the thing become popular, creep in for the commission sake. Away with such men. They are the meanest and most contemptible creature on God’s footstool. None but a moral, high-minded, intelligent and temperate man, has any business with these regiments, and the Colonels who are recommending officers to the new regiments, should look well to these things. The position is attended with fearful responsibilities. It is emphatically a great missionary work, and he who enters into it, takes not only his life, but his very soul into his hand.