"STANDING FIRE"

"I often have asked myself why was it that, with this capacity for daring and endurance , they had not kept the land in a perpetual flame of insurrection ; why , especially since the opening of the war, they had kept so still. The answer was to be found in the peculiar temperament of the races, in their religious faith, and on the habit of patience that centuries had fortified. The shrewder men all said substantially the same thing. What is the use of insurrection, where everything was against them? They had no knowledge, no money, no arms, no drill, no organization,--above all no mutual confidence. It was the tradition among them that all insurrections were always betrayed by somebody . They had no mountain passes to defend like the Maroons of Jamaica,--no impenetrable swamps like the Maroons of Surinam. Where they had these, even on a small scale, they had used them, --as in certain swamps around Savannah and in the everglades of Florida, where they united with the Indians, and would stand fire --so I was told by General Saxton , who had fought them there--when the Indians would retreat ." P.141, ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870)