The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and marvellous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic — displaying great natural capacities in acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers who have had charge of them, that, in the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries — fully equal.

As quoted in Report of the military services of Gen. David Hunter, U.S.A., during the war of the rebellion (1873), made to the U.S. War Department, p. 25 - Report to Edwin M. Stanton (June 1862)