ored troops in the most responsible positions. Colonel Ames,
of the Sixth United States colored troops, and our regiment, have
just been relieved in the front, where we served our tour of
forty-eight hours in turn with the other troops of the corps.
While out, we were subjected to some of the severest shelling I
have ever seen, Malvern Hill not excepted. The enemy got twenty
guns in position during the night, and opened on us yesterday
morning at daylight. Our men stood it, behind their works, of
course, as well as any of the white troops. Our men,
unfortunately, owing to the irregular features of ground, took no
prisoners. Sir, we can bayonet the enemy to terms on this matter
of treating colored soldiers as prisoners of war far sooner than
the authorities at Washington can bring him to it by negotiation.
This I am morally persuaded of. I know, further, that the enemy
won't fight us if he can help it. I am sure that the same number
of white troops could not have taken those works on the evening
of the fifteenth; prisoners that we took told me so. I mean
prisoners who came in after the abandonment of the fort, because
they could not get away. They excuse themselves on the ground of
pride; as one of them said to me: 'D----d if men educated as we
have been will fight with niggers, and your government ought not
to expect it.' The real fact is, the rebels will not stand
against our colored soldiers when there is any chance of their
being taken prisoners, for they are conscious of what they justly
deserve. Our men went into these works after they were taken,
yelling 'Fort Pillow!' The enemy well knows what this means, and
I will venture the assertion, that that piece of infernal
brutality enforced by them there has cost the enemy already two
men for every one they so inhumanly murdered."[105]

The 9th corps, under Burnside, containing a splendid brigade of
Colored Troops, had finally pushed its way up to one hundred and fifty
yards of the enemy's works. In the immediate front a small fort
projected out quite a distance beyond the main line of the enemy's
works. It was decided to place a mine under this fort and destroy it.
Just in the rear of the 9th corps was a ravine, which furnished a safe
and unobserved starting-point for the mine. It was pushed forward with
great speed and care. When