To balance this there were great individual resources when alone,--a sort of Indian wiliness and subtlety of resource.

Their gregariousness and love of drill made them more easy to keep in hand than white American troops, who rather like to straggle or go in little squads, looking out for themselves, without being bothered with officers.

The blacks prefer organization.
The point of inferiority that I always feared, though I never had occasion to prove it, was that they might show less fibre, less tough and dogged resistance, than whites, during a prolonged trial,--a long, disastrous march, for instance, or the hopeless defence of a besieged town.

I should not be afraid of their mutinying or running away, but of their drooping and dying.

It might not turn out so; but I mention it for the sake of fairness, and to avoid overstating the merits of these troops.