There were more than seven hundred enlisted men in the regiment, when mustered out after more than three years' service.

The ranks had been kept full by enlistment, but there were only fourteen line-officers instead of the full thirty.

The men who should have filled those vacancies were doing duty as sergeants in the ranks.
In what respect were the colored troops a source of disappointment?
To me in one respect only,--that of health.

Their health improved, indeed, as they grew more familiar with military life; but I think that neither their physical nor moral temperament gave them that toughness, that obstinate purpose of living, which sustains the more materialistic Anglo-Saxon.

They had not, to be sure, the same predominant diseases, suffering in the pulmonary, not in the digestive organs; but they suffered a good deal.