Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[180] service. To these things he was perhaps oversensitive, and he had to be defended against this tendency, as he was, by an admirable wife and by an invaluable staff officer and housemate, Brevet Major Edward W. Hooper, of Massachusetts, who was his volunteer aide-de-camp and housemate. The latter was, as many Bostonians will remember, of splendid executive ability, as shown by his long subsequent service as steward and treasurer of Harvard University; a man of rare organizing power, and of a cheerfulness which made him only laugh away dozens of grievances that vexed General Saxton.

As an organizer of troops General Saxton's standard was very high, and he assumed, as was proper, that a regiment made out of former slaves should not merely follow good moral examples, but set them. As all men in that day knew, there was a formidable variation in this respect in different regiments, some of the volunteer officers whose military standard was the highest being the lowest in their personal habits. General Saxton would issue special orders from time to time to maintain a high tone morally in the camp, as he did, indeed, in the whole region under his command. He was never in entire harmony with General Gillmore, the military commander of the department, whose interest was thought to lie chiefly in the artillery service;