n the whole, I took nothing by the motion,
as was apt to be the case with those who spoke a good word for our
Government, in those vacillating and half proslavery days.

At any rate, this ungenerous discouragement had this good effect, that
it touched their pride; they would deserve justice, even if they did
not obtain it. This pride was afterwards severely tested during the
disgraceful period when the party of repudiation in Congress temporarily
deprived them of their promised pay. In my regiment the men never
mutinied, nor even threatened mutiny; they seemed to make it a matter of
honor to do then: part, even if the Government proved a defaulter;
but one third of them, including the best men in the regiment, quietly
refused to take a dollar's pay, at the reduced price. "We'se gib our
sogerin' to de Guv'ment, Gunnel," they said, "but we won't 'spise
ourselves so much for take de seben dollar." They even made a
contemptuous ballad, of which I once caught a snatch.

"Ten dollar a month!
Tree ob dat for clothin'l
Go to Washington
Fight for Linkum's darter!"

This "Lincoln's daughter" stood for the Goddess of Liberty, it would
seem. They would be true to her, but they would not take the half-pay.
This was contrary to my advice, and to that of other officers; but I
now think it was wise. Nothing less than this would have called the
attention of the American people to this outrageous fraud.*

* See Appendix.

The same slow forecast had often marked their action in other ways. One
of our ablest sergeants, Henry Mclntyre, who had earned two dollars and
a half per day as a master-carpenter in Florida, and paid one dollar and
a half to his master, told me that he had deliberately refrained from
learning to read, because that knowledge exposed the slaves to so much
more watching and suspicion. This man and a few others had built on
contract the greater part of the town of Micanopy in Florida, and was a
thriving man when his accustomed discretion failed for once, and he lost
all. He named his child William Lincoln, and it brought upon him such
suspicion that he had to make his escape.

I cannot conceive what people at the North mean by speaking of the
negroes as a bestial or brutal race. Except in some insensibility to
animal pain, I never knew of an act in my regiment which I should call
brutal. In reading Kay's "Condition of the English Peasantry" I was
constantly struck with the unlikeness of my men to those