Tenth U.S. Volunteers.
Eighth U.S. Volunteers.
Ninth U.S. Volunteers.
The conduct of the colored volunteers has been harshly criticised, and it is thought by some that the conduct of the volunteers has had some influence in derrogation of the good record made by the regulars around Santiago. This view, however, we think unjust, and ill-founded. There was considerable shooting of pistols and drunkenness among some regiments of volunteers, and it was not confined by any means to those of the colored race. The white volunteers were as drunk and noisy as the colored, and shot as many pistols.
The Charlotte Observer has the following editorial concerning some white troops that passed through Charlotte, N.C.:
"Mustered-out West Virginia and New York volunteer soldiers who passed through this city Saturday night, behaved on the train and here like barbarians, disgracing their uniforms, their States and themselves. They were drunk and disorderly, and their firing of pistols, destruction of property and theft of edibles was not as bad as their outrageous profanity and obscenity on the cars in the hearing of ladies. Clearly they are brutes when sober and whiskey only developed the vileness already in them."
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. It is to be regretted that the colored volunteers, especially those under Negro officers, did not have an opportunity to show their powers on the battlefield, and thus demonstrate their ability as soldiers, and so refreshing the memory of the nation as to what Negro soldiers once did at Ft. Wagner and Milikin's Bend. The volunteer boys were ready and willing and only needed a chance to show what they could do.
POLICED BY NEGROES.
White Immunes Ordered out of Santiago, and a Colored Regiment Placed in Charge.