When

any of the men in Driscol's new battalion, but he'd seen a few of them when they'd accompanied the major on his visits to Tiana. One of them, in particular, had caught the general's eye. He was a black man, like all the rest except one young white soldier, but seemed to carry himself with an unusual degree of poise.
When he'd inquired, Driscol had told him that was Charles Ball, a veteran from the U.S. Navy. The man who'd been in charge of the American artillery at the Capitol.
A freedmen's battalion, it was, made up almost entirely of former slaves who were now mostly ironworkers. The lowest stock of all, other than outright slaves, who'd need time and experience to develop the self-confidence that such men would naturally lack from their life's experience.
Normally, Ross would have dismissed such a formation without a thought. A unit made up of men