Letter from Colonel James C. Beecher, First North Carolina Colored Volunteers (Thirty-fifth United States Colored Troops), to His Fiancée, Frances Perkins, June 15, 1863
I am amazed at the promptitude of these men to learn military drill and in less than three weeks I shall have a battalion which any man might be proud of. There is an amount of muscle which no regiment in the service can boast of. . . . I think the government can't frown at a regiment-enlisted, organized-uniformed-armed-equipped and handsomely encamped in six weeks. . . . I wish doubtful people at home could see my three week's regiment. They would talk less nonsense about negro inferiority.
