Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays. You can also browse the collection for Sydney (Ohio, United States) or search for Sydney (Ohio, United States) in all documents.

Your search returned 1 result in 1 document section:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, chapter 10 (search)
urage, there was not, I suspect, much difference. Most men have the ordinary share of that attribute; comparatively few are adventurous; the commander of any regiment, white or black, soon knew perfectly well just which of his men would be likely to volunteer for a forlorn hope. Whether the better education and social position of white soldiers brought them more under the influence of what Sir Philip Sidney calls the great appetites of honor I cannot say; this being, it will be remembered, Sidney's reason for expecting more courage from officers than from enlisted men. It is quite certain, on the other hand, that any want of such qualities was more than balanced by the fact that the black soldiers were fighting for their freedom and that of their families, this being the most potent of all motives. They used often to point out, in conversation, that they had really far more at stake than their officers had, since, if the Confederates conquered, or even if it were a drawn game, the n