Their courage I had before seen tested; their docile and lovable qualities I had known; and the only real surprise that experience brought me was in finding them so little demoralized.

I had not allowed for the extreme remoteness and seclusion of their lives, especially among the Sea Islands.

Many of them had literally spent their whole existence on some lonely island or remote plantation, where the master never came, and the overseer only once or twice a week.

With these exceptions, such persons had never seen a white face, and of the excitements or sins of larger communities they had not a conception.

My friend Colonel Hallo-well, of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, told me that he had among his men some of the worst reprobates of Northern cities.