THOMAS LONG

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"WE WHIPPED DOWN ALL DAT"

Thomas Long, a former slave and a private in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, assesses the meaning of black military service during the Civil War.

We can remember, when we fust enlisted, it was hardly safe for we to pass by de camps to Beaufort and back, lest we went in a mob and carried side arms. But we whipped down all dat- - not by going into de white camps for whip um; we didn't tote our bayonets for whip um; but we lived it down by our naturally manhood; and now de white sojers take us by de hand and say Broder Sojer. Dats what dis regiment did for de Epiopian race.

If we hadn't become sojers, all might have gone back as it was before; our freedom might have slipped through de two houses of Congress and President Linkum's four years might have passed by and notin' been done for us. But now tings can neber go back, because we have showed our energy and our courage and our naturally manhood.

Source: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston, 1870).