FROM THE REGIMENTS.
CAMP OF THE 27TH U.S. COLORED REGIMENT.
FAISON’S STATION, W. & W. R.R., April 2, 1865.
MR. EDITOR: Perhaps the people would like to know where we are and what we are doing.
We, i.e. the Third Division of the Twenty-fifth Army Corps, are encamped at present at the above-named place guarding the railroad, and supplies now being sent along this line to the Western army now lying in our front. This division was detached from the main corps in the front of Richmond on the 3d of January and transported to North Carolina, where we with the Second Division of the Twenty-fourth Corps have been operating up to this date. The extent of our operations are too well known to require a rehearsal by me. Suffice it to say that we have done all that we have attempted, and succeeded in foiling the plans of the rebels, however sagaciously they may have been laid or attempted to be executed. And were it not for the difficulties under which we seem destined to live and die (and all because nature has given us a black skin), we would certainly feel that now is the beginning of the soldier’s harvest.
When citizens hear me speak of difficulties, insults and injuries, they will doubtless say that the day of grumbling over existing wrongs is past, and that we should only look to the fast-approaching glory of the bright future. True, the authorities in power (in the main) are doing well for us as a people, and in prospecting the future we can perhaps see something to lure onward the ambitious; but when the true-hearted patriotic soldier sees within his own corps and even regiment his merited rights embezzled and buried and be denied the right to perform any other than menial service, he not only feels chagrined, but is constrained to utter in language unmistakably plain the promptings of his manly nature; let him be white or black or his condition prior to his being a soldier have been what it might.
Such concerns often in colored regiments, which are commanded solely by white officers. But we are happy to say that many of those officers are excellent men, and prove an honor to the position they occupy, while others are as unprincipled and far deeper tainted with jealousy and selfishness than the untutored slave.
When we hear our officers say, as I have heard them say when defending the right of the black man to fight in this war, that they are willing for the niggers to fight, because they would save the lives of just so many white men, we feel disposed to place our own estimate upon their manly virtue and patriotism.
Upon receiving the intelligence of the appointment of Martin R. Delany as major in the United States Army, a certain line officer of considerable note, remarked, that before he would do service under or with a d—d nigger like him that he would desert the service. Such characters as those justly merit the scorn and reproach of every colored soldier in the ranks, and an exposition of their dastardly principles to the entire public. If such officers were dismissed from the service immediately, and their places supplied by some of those tried and worthy men whom they delight to command for the sake of office and greenbacks, the U. S. Colored Troops would doubtless prove even more efficient than at present and be better satisfied.
SPARTAN.