good green paper would buy so much
more than any currency they had known for years, that they snatched it
greedily. And many of them enjoyed the first real respect for the
Union that they had had for four years, when they met the well-fed and
well-clothed Union soldiers, who did not seem as bad as they had been
painted, the poorest one of which had more money in his pockets than the
richest citizen of supposed wealth. The people seemed surprised to meet
well-dressed private soldiers who could converse on any subject, and who
seemed capable of doing any kind of business. Fires broke out in many
places in the city, and Union soldiers went to work with the primitive
fire apparatus at hand and put out the fires. Locomotives had been
thrown from the track of the railroad in an attempt to destroy them, and
private soldiers were detailed to put the locomotives together and run
them, which they did, to the surprise of the people. An officer would
take charge of a quantity of captured property, and he would detail the
first half-dozen soldiers he met to go and make out an invoice of
the property, and the boys would do it as well as the oldest southern
merchant. A planter that could not speak anything but French would come
to the captain, of a company to complain of something, and the captain
after vainly trying to understand the man, would turn to some soldier
in his company and say, "Here Frenchy, talk to this man, and see what
he wants," and the soldier would address the planter in French, politely,
and in a moment the difficulty would be settled, and the planter
would go away bowing and smiling. Any language could be spoken by the
soldiers, and any business that ever was transacted could be done by
them. A soldier printer visited the office of a city paper, and in a
conversation with the editor informed him that there were editors enough
in his regiment to edit the New York _Herald_. At first the better class
of citizens, the old fathers in Israel, of the confederacy, stood
aloof from the new soldiers in blue, expecting them to be insolent, as
conquerors are sometimes supposed to be; but soon they saw that the boys
were as mild a mannered and friendly and jolly a lot as they ever saw,
not the least inclined to gloat over their fallen enemy, and at times
acting as though they were sorry to make any trouble; and it was not
long before boys in blue and citizens in gray were playing billiards
together, with old gentlemen keeping co