They felt malaria less, but they were more easily choked by dust and made ill by dampness.

On the other hand, they submitted more readily to sanitary measures than whites, and, with efficient officers, were more easily kept clean.

They were injured throughout the army by an undue share of fatigue duty, which is not only exhausting but demoralizing to a soldier; by the un-suitableness of the rations, which gave them salt meat instead of rice and hominy; and by the lack of good medical attendance.

Their childlike constitutions peculiarly needed prompt and efficient surgical care; but almost all the colored troops were enlisted late in the war, when it was hard to get good surgeons for any regiments, and especially for these.

In this respect I had nothing to complain of, since there were no surgeons in the army for whom I would have exchanged my own.
And this late arrival on the scene affected not only the medical supervision of the colored troops, but their opportunity for a career.
It is not my province to write their history, nor to vindicate them, nor to follow them upon those larger fields compared with which the adventures of my regiment appear but a partisan warfare.