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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, Chapter 12: the negro as a soldier. (search)
ly a matter of principle. Once I heard one of them say to another, in a transport of indignation, Ha-a-a, boy, s'pose I no be a Christian, I cuss you so! --which was certainly drawing pretty hard upon the bridle. Cuss, however, was a generic term for all manner of evil speaking; they would say, He cuss me fool, or He cuss me coward, as if the essence of propriety were in harsh and angry speech,--which I take to be good ethics. But certainly, if Uncle Toby could have recruited his army in Flanders from our ranks, their swearing would have ceased to be historic. It used to seem to me that never, since Cromwell's time, had there been soldiers in whom the religious element held such a place. A religious army, a gospel army, were their frequent phrases. In their prayer-meetings there was always a mingling, often quaint enough, of the warlike and the pious. If each one of us was a praying man, said Corporal Thomas Long in a sermon, it appears to me that we could fight as well with