Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

“ Yes, one of those white friends of whom you speak is a boy raised on one of my plantations; he has travelled with me to the North, and passed for white, and he always keeps away from the negroes.”

Certainly no such suspicion had ever crossed my mind.

I have noticed one man in the regiment who would easily pass for white,--a little sickly drummer, aged fifty at least, with brown eyes and reddish hair, who is said to be the son of one of our commodores. I have seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair, or fairer, among fugitive slaves, but they were usually young children. It touched me far more to see this man, who had spent more than half a lifetime in this low estate, and for whom it now seemed too late to be anything but a “nigger.” This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with them as at the North, and far mere common than with well-bred slaveholders. They have meekly accepted it. “Want to go out to de nigger houses, Sah,” is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the lines. “He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o‘ nigger,” is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in white regiments. “He need n't try to play de white man ober me,” was the protest of a soldier against his corporal the other day. To counteract this I have often to remind them that they do not obey their officers because they are white, but because they are their officers; and guard duty is an admirable school for this, because they