BRIGADIER-GENERAL SAXTON.
Appendix D The Struggle for Pay The story of the attempt to cut down the pay of the colored troops is too long, too complicated, and too humiliating, to be here narrated.

In the case of my regiment there stood on record the direct pledge of the War Department to General Saxton that their pay should be the same as that of whites.

So clear was this that our kind paymaster, Major W.J.
Wood, of New Jersey, took upon himself the responsibility of paying the price agreed upon, for five months, till he was compelled by express orders to reduce it from thirteen dollars per month to ten dollars, and from that to seven dollars,--the pay of quartermaster's men and day-laborers.

At the same time the "stoppages" from the pay-rolls for the loss of all equipments and articles of clothing remained the same as for all other soldiers, so that it placed the men in the most painful and humiliating condition.

Many of them had families to provide for, and between the actual distress, the sense of wrong, the taunts of those who had refused to enlist from the fear of being cheated, and the doubt how much farther the cheat might be carried, the poor fellows were goaded to the utmost.