ly more and more deeply impressed,
through their military associations, and by contact with things that
required knowledge, with the necessity of having an education. Each
soldier felt that but for his illiteracy he might be a sergeant, company
clerk, or quartermaster, and not a few, that if educated, they might be
lieutenants and captains. This was not an unnatural conclusion for a
brave soldier to arrive at, when men no braver than himself, were being
promoted for bravery.

Generally there was one of three things the negro soldiers could be
found doing when at leisure: discussing religion, cleaning his musket
and accoutrements, or trying to read. His zeal frequently led him to
neglect to eat for the latter. Every camp had a teacher, in fact every
company had some one to instruct the soldiers in reading, if nothing
more. Since the war I have known of more than one who have taken up the
profession of preaching and law making, whose first letter was learned
in camp; and not a few who have entered college.

The negro soldier was not only patriotic in the highest sense but he was
a quick observer of both the disadvantages and opportunities of his
race. He recognized the fact that the general education of the white men
who composed the Union army in contra-distinction to so many of those of
the confederate army, gave them great prestige over the enemy. The
ingenuity of the Yankee he attributed to his education, and he readily
decided that he lacked only the Yankee's education to be his equal in
genius. Great was the incentive given him by example, arousing his
latent hope to be something more than a free man; if not that, his
children might rise from the cornfield to the higher walks of life.
Their thirst for a knowledge of letters was evinced in more ways than
one, as was their appreciation of the opportunity to assist in providing
for coming generations.

Colonel G. M. Arnold says:

"Aside from the military duties required of the men forming
the Phalanx regiments, the school teacher was drilling and
preparing them in the comprehension of letters and figures.
In nearly every regiment a school, during the encampment,
was established, in some instances female teachers from the
North, impulsed by that philanthropy which induced an army
of teachers South to teach the freedmen, also brought them
to the barracks and the camp ground to instruct the soldiers
of the Phalanx. Their a