I just finished reading Donald C. Pfanz's book Clara Barton's Civil War: Between Bullet and Hospital. While working at the Point of Rocks Hospital near Petersburg, which primarily served sick and wounded soldiers of the Army of the James, Barton made a complimentary comment about soldiers of the United States Colored Troops. She wrote: "They are ever the objects of my deep commiseration and care, so patient and cheerful, so uniformly polite and soldierly. They are brave men and make no complaints, and yet I cannot pass one without the keenest desire to give him something; and it is enough they need, poor fellows. One feature especially pleases me, the excellent nurses they make, and the kind care they take of each other, in camp and hospital. But I am well satisfied that they are not a class of men that an enemy would desire to meet on a charge. They have wants as soldiers now, as well as 'Freedmen,' and I sincerely hope this fact may not be overlooked by their northern friends."
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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