Joseph Glarthaar’s Forged in Battle is not the first excel-

lent study of Black soldiers and their White officers in the

Civil War, but it uses more soldiers’ letters and diaries—

including rare material from Black soldiers—and concen-

(5) rates more intensely on Black-White relations in Black

regiments than do any of its predecessors. Glathaar’s title

expresses his thesis: loyalty, friendship, and respect among

White officers and Black soldiers were fostered by the

mutual dangers they faced in combat.

(10 ) Glarthaar accurately describes the government’s discrim-

inatory treatment of Black soldiers in pay, promotion, medi

cal care, and job assignments, appropriately emphasizing

the campaign by Black soldiers and their officers to get the

opportunity to fight. That chance remained limited through

(15) out the war by army policies that kept most Black units

serving in rear-echelon assignments and working in labor

battalions. Thus, while their combat death rate was only

one-third that of White units, their mortality rate from

disease, a major killer in his war, was twice as great.

(20) Despite these obstacles, the courage and effectiveness of

several Black units in combat won increasing respect from

initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White

officer put it, “they have fought their way into the respect

of all the army.”

(25) In trying to demonstrate the magnitude of this attitudi-

nal change, however, Glarthaar seems to exaggerate the

prewar racism of the White men who became officers in

Black regiments. “Prior to the war,” he writes of these

men, “virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices.”

(30) While perhaps true of those officers who joined Black

units for promotion or other self-serving motives, this state-

ment misrepresents the attitudes of the many abolitionists

who became officers in Black regiments. Having spent

years fighting against the race prejudice endemic in Ameri-

(35) can society; they participated eagerly in this military

experiment, which they hoped would help African Americans

achieve freedom and postwar civil equality. By current

standards of racial egalitarianism, these men’s paternalism

toward African Americans was racist. But to call their

(40) feelings “powerful racial prejudices” is to indulge in

generational chauvinism—to judge past eras by present standards.

171. The passage suggests that which of the following was true of

Black units’ disease mortality rates in the Civil War?

(A) They were almost as high as the combat mortality rates

of White units.

(B) They resulted in part from the relative inexperience of

these units when in combat.

(C) They were especially high because of the nature of these

units’ usual duty assignments.

(D) They resulted in extremely high overall casualty rates in

Black combat units.

(E) They exacerbated the morale problems that were caused

by the army’s discriminatory policies.

答案是C ,D为什么不对 D的意思是疾病是黑人在这场战争中死亡率非常高的原因

D 和文中 的这句话矛盾：Thus, while their combat death rate was only

one-third that of White units,

也就是说实际上rate 并不高

in D, extremely high is not correct according to the sentence above.