It helped their _esprit de corps_ immensely.

With us, at least, there was to be no play-soldier.
Though they had begun with a slight feeling of inferiority to the white troops, this compliment substituted a peculiar sense of self-respect.
And even when the new colored regiments began to arrive from the North my men still pointed out this difference,--that in case of ultimate defeat, the Northern troops, black or white, would go home, while the First South Carolina must fight it out or be re-enslaved.

This was one thing that made the St.John's River so attractive to them and even to me;--it was so much nearer the everglades.

I used seriously to ponder, during the darker periods of the war, whether I might not end my days as an outlaw,--a leader of Maroons.
Meanwhile, I used to try to make some capital for the Northern troops, in their estimate, by pointing out that it was a disinterested thing in these men from the free States, to come down there and fight, that the slaves might be free.

But they were apt keenly to reply, that many of the white soldiers disavowed this object, and said that that was not the object of the war, nor even likely to be its end.