RALEIGH, June 4, 186x.
Brigadier-General HAWLEY,
Wilmington:
You are to use the colored troops as you think best, so as to relieve the white troops from duty where they would be exposed to disease.
x. x. xxxxxxxxx,
Major-General.
Those Southerners, what a group of bad men….
Wait, this order came out 9 days later, I reveal the year and the general for the above note:
GENERAL ORDERS, HDQRS. DEPT. OF NORTH CAROLINA,, ARMY OF THE OHIO, Numbers 84.
Raleigh, N. C., June 13, 1865.
The time has arrived when I must bid farewell to many of my old comrades of the Army of the Ohio, and doubtless the time will soon come when we all must separate. It is a farewell tinged with no feeling of sadness, save for the loss of our brave comrades who have fallen. Our thoughts at parting are of duty faithfully done, of hardships and dangers bravely met, of battles fought and victories won, of our glorious Union saved from destruction and more firmly reestablished on the basis of freedom for all, of dear homes and friends to which we are returning, rendered tenfold more dear by the price it has cost us to preserve them, and of the grateful welcome that awaits us among our friends and countrymen.Let the memory of Knoxville, Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw, Chattahoochee, and Atlanta; of Columbia, Franklin, and Nashville; of Fort Wagner, Drewry’s Bluff, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Richmond, and Fort Harrison; of Fort Fisher, Anderson, Wilmington, and Kinston, ever remind us of the priceless value of our free institutions, and incite in us that faithful discharge of our duties as citizens which alone can secure to us and to our posterity the full fruits of the victories which as soldiers we have won.
My comrades, I bid you farewell, and may Almighty God bless and reward you for patriotism and fidelity in the cause of liberty and Union, and may he comfort and protect the widows and orphan children of our comrades who have given their lives for their country.
J. M. SCHOFIELD,
Major-General.
Things were not as clear-cut as we have convinced ourselves during the intervening 150 years.