"But, Captain," said his First Lieutenant, "would you fight alongside of a darkie?"
"Would you drive a darkie away if he came to assist you in a struggle for life?"
"Yes, but we have men enough without their aid."
"You forget, Lieutenant, that, as matters now are, we have them fighting against us."
"How so?"
"They raise the crops that feed the Rebel army. They are just as much, perhaps not as directly, but just as really fighting against us as the founders who cast their cannon. And as to fighting alongside of them, they may have quite as many prejudices against fighting alongside of us. There is no necessity of interfering with either. Organize colored regiments; appoint colored line officers if efficient, and white field and staff officers, until they attain sufficient proficiency for command. As to their fighting qualities, military records attest them abundantly. The shrewd 'nephew of his uncle' has used them for years."
The earnest argument of the Captain made a deep impression upon the men. The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists, and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast removing that question beyond the pale of prejudice.
A halt was ordered, and the men rested on the
sward that bordered the hard pike, and in the immediate neighborhood of the village cemetery. It was literally crowded with graves, many of them fresh. Large additions had been made from surrounding fields, and they too were closely taken up by ridges covering the dead of Antietam.
The surrounding country had suffered little from the ravages of war. Visited occasionally by scouting parties—principally cavalry—of both sides, there had been none of the occupation by large bodies of troops, which levels fences, destroys crops, and speedily gives the most fertile of countries the seeming barrenness of the desert. The valley had a reputation that ran back to an ante-Revolutionary date for magnificence of scenery and fertility of soil. Washington, with all the enthusiasm of ardent youth, paid it glowing encomiums in his field-notes of the Fairfax surveys. In later times, when the destinies of our struggling colonies rested upon his ample shoulders, the leaders of the faction opposed to him—for great and good as he was, he had jealous, bitter, and malignant enemies—settled a few miles beyond Shepherdstown, at what has since been known as Leetown. The farms, with few exceptions, had nothing of the slovenly air, dilapidated, worn-out appearance, that characterized other parts of Virginia. Upon inquiry we found that the large landowners were in the habit of procuring tenants from the lower counties of Pennsylvania, and that the thrift and close cultivation were really imported. In the course of time these tenants, with their customary acquisitiveness, became landowners themselves, and their farms were readily distinguishable by the farm buildings, and particularly by the large substantial red bank barns.