Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by scores and hundreds and thousands, wearing Federal uniforms, and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets.
Reid describes the shock of Southern citizens encountering formerly enslaved individuals now in military roles.
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You see, General, this is alarming, and you must acknowledge that we are not safe.
Give them order and justice, and trust to these to win them in other regards to our ways.
But why should a sensible man deal with such folly?
With her, then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship, and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.