When a negro has a motive, his nerves grow firm, his imagination escapes before the rising passion, his contempt for death is not stolidity, but inspiration. In the smouldering surface lies an ember capable of white heat. That makes the negro soldier difficult to hold in hand or to call off. He has no fancy for grim sitting, like the Indian, to die by inches, though he can endure torture with tranquillity. He is too tropical for that; and after the exultation of a fight, in which he has been as savage as he can be, the process of torturing his foes seems tame, and he seldom does it, except by way of close reprisals to prevent the practice in his enemy. The French were invariably more cruel than the negroes.
Southern gentlemen think that the negro is incurably afraid of fire-arms, and too clumsy to use them with effect. It is a great mistake. White men who never touched a gun are equally clumsy and nervous. When the slavers began to furnish the native tribes with condemned muskets in exchange for slaves, many ludicrous scenes occurred. The Senegambians considered that the object was to get as much noise as possible out of the weapon. The people of Akkra planted the stock against their hips, shut both eyes and fired; they would not take aim, because it was their opinion that it brought certain death to see a falling enemy. Other tribes thought a musket was possessed, and at the moment of firing threw it violently away from them. When we consider the quality of the weapons furnished, this action will appear laudable. But as these superstitions disappeared, especially upon the Gold Coast and in Ashantee, negroes have learned to use the musket properly. Among the Gold-Coast negroes are good smiths, who have sometimes even made guns. In the West Indies, the Creole negro has become a sharp-shooter, very formidable on the skirts of woods and in the defiles of the _mornes_. He learned to deliver volleys with precision, and to use the bayonet with great valor. The old soldiers of Le Clerc and Rochambeau, veterans of the Rhine and Italy, were never known to presume upon negro incapacity to use a musket. The number of their dead and wounded taught them what men who are determined to be free can do with the white man's weapons.