“‘But if you lost it you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you died for your country.’
“‘Dat no satisfaction when feelin’s gone.’
“‘Then patriotism and honor are nothing to you?’
“‘Nufin whatever, sat—I regard them as among the vanities.’
“‘If our soldiers were like you, traitors might have broken up the government without resistance.’
“‘Yes, sa, dar would hab been no help for it. I wouldn’t put my life in de scale ‘g’inst any gobernment dat eber existed, for no gobernment could replace de loss to me.’
“‘Do you think any of your company would have missed you if you had been killed?’
“‘Maybe not, sa—a dead white man ain’t much to dese sogers, let alone a dead nigga—but I’d a missed myse’f, and dat was de p’int wid me.’
“I only tell this story,” concluded the President, “in order to illustrate the result of the tactics of some of the Union generals who would be sadly ‘missed’ by themselves, if no one else, if they ever got out of the Army.”