CHAPTER VI.

ROBERT JOHNSON’S PROMOTION AND RELIGION.

Robert Johnson, being able to meet the army requirements, was enlisted as a substitute to help fill out the quota of a Northern regiment.  With his intelligence, courage, and prompt obedience, he rose from the ranks and became lieutenant of a colored company.  He was daring, without being rash; prompt, but not thoughtless; firm, without being harsh.  Kind and devoted to the company he drilled, he soon won the respect of his superior officers and the love of his comrades.

“Johnson,” said a young officer, Captain Sybil, of Maine, who had become attached to Robert, “what is the use of your saying you’re a colored man, when you are as white as I am, and as brave a man as there is among us.  Why not quit this company, and take your place in the army just the same as a white man?  I know your chances for promotion would be better.”

“Captain, you may doubt my word, but to-day I would rather be a lieutenant in my company than a captain in yours.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Well, Captain, when a man’s been colored all his life it comes a little hard for him to get white all at once.  Were I to try it, I would feel like a cat in a strange garret.  Captain, I think my place is where I am most needed.  You do not need me in your ranks, and my company does.  They are excellent fighters, but they need a leader.  To silence a battery, to capture a flag, to take a fortification, they will rush into the jaws of death.”

“Yes, I have often wondered at their bravery.”

“Captain, these battles put them on their mettle.  They have been so long taught that they are nothing and nobody, that they seem glad to prove they are something and somebody.”

“But, Johnson, you do not look like them, you do not talk like them.  It is a burning shame to have held such a man as you in slavery.”

“I don’t think it was any worse to have held me in slavery than the blackest man in the South.”

“You are right, Johnson.  The color of a man’s skin has nothing to do with the possession of his rights.”

“Now, there is Tom Anderson,” said Robert, “he is just as black as black can be.  He has been bought and sold like a beast, and yet there is not a braver man in all the company.  I know him well.  He is a noble-hearted fellow.  True as steel.  I love him like a brother.  And I believe Tom would risk his life for me any day.  He don’t know anything about his father or mother.  He was sold from them before he could remember.  He can read a little.  He used to take lessons from a white gardener in Virginia.  He would go between the hours of 9 P.M. and 4 A.M.  He got a book of his own, tore it up, greased the pages, and hid them in his hat.  Then if his master had ever knocked his hat off he would have thought them greasy papers, and not that Tom was carrying his library