"
By a careful comparison of the reports in the newspapers, we see a
slight excess of rowdyism on the part of the whites, but much less
fuss made about it. In traveling from place to place if a white
volunteer company fired a few shots in the air, robbed a fruit stand,
or fussed with the by standers at railroad stations or drank whiskey
at the car windows, the fact was simply mentioned in the morning
papers, but if a Negro company fired a pistol a telegram was sent
ahead to have mobs in readiness to "do up the niggers" at the next
station, and at one place in Georgia the militia was called out by a
telegram sent ahead, and discharged a volley into the car containing
white officers and their families, so eager were they to "do up the
nigger." At Nashville the city police are reported to have charged
through the train clubbing the colored volunteers who were returning
home, and taking anything in the shape of a weapon away from them by
force. In Texarcana or thereabouts it was reported that a train of
colored troopers was blown up by dynamite. The Southern mobs seemed to
pride themselves in assaulting the colored soldiers.
While the colored volunteers were not engaged in active warfare, yet
they attained a high degree of discipline and the CLEANEST AND MOST
ORDERLY CAMP among any of the volunteers was reported by the chief
sanitary officer of the government to be that of one of the colored
volunteer regiments stationed in Virginia.
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