Maybe Ulysses S. Grant was prouder of the three stars on his shoulder straps than Benjamin Robinson was of the three stripes on his left sleeve, but maybe he wasn't, too. No doubt Grant had risen from humble beginnings. He was a tanner's son. He'd failed at everything he tried till the war began. Only the fighting gave him a chance to rise.

And the same was also true of Sergeant Ben Robinson. Next to him, though, U. S. Grant had started out a nobleman. Ben Robinson was born a slave on an indigo plantation not far outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He'd heard the big guns boom when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter.

Not long after that, his master ran short of cash and sold him and several other hands to a dealer who resold them at a tidy profit to a cotton planter with a farm outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Not without pride, Ben knew he'd brought the dealer more money than any of the other hands. He was somewhere around thirty, six feet one, and close to two hundred pounds. And he worked hard – or as hard as any slave was likely to work, seeing that he wasn't working for himself.

Once, drunk, his new owner told him, “If all niggers was like you,

Ben, we'd have a hell of a time keeping slaves.”

The white man didn't remember it the next morning. Ben Robinson never forgot it. He probably would have run off anyway when Federal troops got down to Corinth, Mississippi. He'd long been sure he could run his own life better than any white man could run it for him. But finding out that his master more or less agreed with him sure didn't hurt.

He'd been a stevedore, a roustabout, a strong back for the Yankees, too – till they started signing up colored soldiers. He was one of the first men to volunteer. Even the very limited, very partial freedom he had as a laborer struck him as worth fighting for.