← catalogue

Army Life in a Black Regiment

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson · English · Gutenberg #6764 · 519,342 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Army Life in a Black Regiment
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Army Life in a Black Regiment

Author: Thomas Wentworth Higginson


        
Release date: October 1, 2004 [eBook #6764]
                Most recently updated: March 23, 2009

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6764

Credits: Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT ***




Produced by Eric Eldred





ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT


Thomas Wentworth Higginson

(1823-1911)


Originally published 1869

Reprinted, 1900, by Riverside Press



CONTENTS


CHAPTER 1 Introductory

CHAPTER 2 Camp Diary

CHAPTER 3 Up the St. Mary's

CHAPTER 4 Up the St. John's

CHAPTER 5 Out on Picket

CHAPTER 6 A Night in the Water

CHAPTER 7 Up the Edisto

CHAPTER 8 The Baby of the Regiment

CHAPTER 9 Negro Spirituals

CHAPTER 10 Life at Camp Shaw

CHAPTER 11 Florida Again?

CHAPTER 12 The Negro as a Soldier

CHAPTER 13 Conclusion

APPENDIX

     A. Roster of Officers
     B. The First Black Soldiers
     C. General Saxton's Instructions
     D. The Struggle for Pay
     E. Farewell Address

Index




Chapter 1. Introductory


These pages record some of the adventures of the First South Carolina
Volunteers, the first slave regiment mustered into the service of the
United States during the late civil war. It was, indeed, the first
colored regiment of any kind so mustered, except a portion of the troops
raised by Major-General Butler at New Orleans. These scarcely belonged
to the same class, however, being recruited from the free colored
population of that city, a comparatively self-reliant and educated race.
"The darkest of them," said General Butler, "were about the complexion
of the late Mr. Webster."

The First South Carolina, on the other hand, contained scarcely a
freeman, had not one mulatto in ten, and a far smaller proportion who
could read or write when enlisted. The only contemporary regiment of a
similar character was the "First Kansas Colored," which began recruiting
a little earlier, though it was not mustered in the usual basis of
military seniority till later. [_See Appendix_] These were the only
colored regiments recruited during the year 1862. The Second South
Carolina and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts followed early in 1863.

This is the way in which I came to the command of this regiment. One
day in November, 1862, I was sitting at dinner with my lieutenants,
John Goodell and Luther Bigelow, in the barracks of the Fifty-First
Massachusetts, Colonel Sprague, when the following letter was put into
my hands:

BEAUFORT, S. C., November 5, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR.

I am organizing the First Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, with
every prospect of success. Your name has been spoken of, in connection
with the command of this regiment, by some friends in whose judgment I
have confidence. I take great pleasure in offering you the position of
Colonel in it, and hope that you may be induced to accept. I shall not
fill the place until I hear from you, or sufficient time shall have
passed for me to receive your reply. Should you accept, I enclose a
pass for Port Royal, of which I trust you will feel disposed to avail
yourself at once. I am, with sincere regard, yours truly,

R. SAXTON, _Brig.-Genl, Mil. Gov._

Had an invitation reached me to take command of a regiment of Kalmuck
Tartars, it could hardly have been more unexpected. I had always
looked for the arming of the blacks, and had always felt a wish to be
associated with them; had read the scanty accounts of General Hunter's
abortive regiment, and had heard rumors of General Saxton's renewed
efforts. But the prevalent tone of public sentiment was still opposed to
any such attempts; the government kept very shy of the experiment, and
it did not seem possible that the time had come when it could be fairly
tried.

For myself, I was at the head of a fine company of my own raising, and
in a regiment to which I was already much attached. It did not seem
desirable to exchange a certainty for an uncertainty; for who knew but
General Saxton might yet be thwarted in his efforts by the pro-slavery
influence that had still so much weight at head-quarters? It would be
intolerable to go out to South Carolina, and find myself, after all, at
the head of a mere plantation-guard or a day-school in uniform.

I therefore obtained from the War Department, through Governor Andrew,
permission to go and report to General Saxton, without at once resigning
my captaincy. Fortunately it took but a few days in South Carolina to
make it clear that all was right, and the return steamer took back a
resignation of a Massachusetts commission. Thenceforth my lot was cast
altogether with the black troops, except when regiments or detachments
of white soldiers were also under my command, during the two years
following.

These details would not be worth mentioning except as they show this
fact: that I did not seek the command of colored troops, but it sought
me. And this fact again is only important to my story for this reason,
that under these circumstances I naturally viewed the new recruits
rather as subjects for discipline than for philanthropy. I had been
expecting a war for six years, ever since the Kansas troubles, and my
mind had dwelt on military matters more or less during all that time.
The best Massachusetts regiments already exhibited a high standard of
drill and discipline, and unless these men could be brought tolerably
near that standard, the fact of their extreme blackness would afford me,
even as a philanthropist, no satisfaction. Fortunately, I felt perfect
confidence that they could be so trained, having happily known, by
experience, the qualities of their race, and knowing also that they had
home and household and freedom to fight for, besides that abstraction
of "the Union." Trouble might perhaps be expected from white officials,
though this turned out far less than might have been feared; but there
was no trouble to come from the men, I thought, and none ever came. On
the other hand, it was a vast experiment of indirect philanthropy, and
one on which the result of the war and the destiny of the negro race
might rest; and this was enough to tax all one's powers. I had been an
abolitionist too long, and had known and loved John Brown too well, not
to feel a thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position where
he only wished to be.

In view of all this, it was clear that good discipline must come first;
after that, of course, the men must be helped and elevated in all ways
as much as possible.

Of discipline there was great need, that is, of order and regular
instruction. Some of the men had already been under fire, but they were
very ignorant of drill and camp duty. The officers, being appointed from
a dozen different States, and more than as many regiments, infantry,
cavalry, artillery, and engineers, had all that diversity of methods
which so confused our army in those early days. The first need,
therefore, was of an unbroken interval of training. During this period,
which fortunately lasted nearly two months, I rarely left the camp, and
got occasional leisure moments for a fragmentary journal, to send home,
recording the many odd or novel aspects of the new experience. Camp-life
was a wonderfully strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers,
and mine lay among eight hundred men suddenly transformed from slaves
into soldiers, and representing a race affectionate, enthusiastic,
grotesque, and dramatic beyond all others. Being such, they naturally
gave material for description. There is nothing like a diary for
freshness, at least so I think, and I shall keep to the diary through
the days of camp-life, and throw the later experience into another form.
Indeed, that matter takes care of itself; diaries and letter-writing
stop when field-service begins.

I am under pretty heavy bonds to tell the truth, and only the truth; for
those who look back to the newspaper correspondence of that period
will see that this particular regiment lived for months in a glare of
publicity, such as tests any regiment severely, and certainly prevents
all subsequent romancing in its historian. As the scene of the only
effort on the Atlantic coast to arm the negro, our camp attracted a
continuous stream of visitors, military and civil. A battalion of black
soldiers, a spectacle since so common, seemed then the most daring of
innovations, and the whole demeanor of this particular regiment was
watched with microscopic scrutiny by friends and foes. I felt sometimes
as if we were a plant trying to take root, but constantly pulled up to
see if we were growing. The slightest camp incidents sometimes came
back to us, magnified and distorted, in letters of anxious inquiry from
remote parts of the Union. It was no pleasant thing to live under such
constant surveillance; but it guaranteed the honesty of any success,
while fearfully multiplying the penalties had there been a failure.
A single mutiny, such as has happened in the infancy of a hundred
regiments, a single miniature Bull Run, a stampede of desertions, and it
would have been all over with us; the party of distrust would have got
the upper hand, and there might not have been, during the whole contest,
another effort to arm the negro.

I may now proceed, without farther preparation to the Diary.




Chapter 2. Camp Diary


CAMP SAXTON, near Beaufort, S. C., November 24, 1862.

Yesterday afternoon we were steaming over a summer sea, the deck level
as a parlor-floor, no land in sight, no sail, until at last appeared one
light-house, said to be Cape Romaine, and then a line of trees and
two distant vessels and nothing more. The sun set, a great illuminated
bubble, submerged in one vast bank of rosy suffusion; it grew dark;
after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set,
a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a
radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank
slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel
of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came on deck,
before six,

  "The watch-lights glittered on the land,
  The ship-lights on the sea."

Hilton Head lay on one side, the gunboats on the other; all that was raw
and bare in the low buildings of the new settlement was softened into
picturesqueness by the early light. Stars were still overhead, gulls
wheeled and shrieked, and the broad river rippled duskily towards
Beaufort.

The shores were low and wooded, like any New England shore; there were a
few gunboats, twenty schooners, and some steamers, among them the famous
"Planter," which Robert Small, the slave, presented to the nation. The
river-banks were soft and graceful, though low, and as we steamed up to
Beaufort on the flood-tide this morning, it seemed almost as fair as
the smooth and lovely canals which Stedman traversed to meet his negro
soldiers in Surinam. The air was cool as at home, yet the foliage seemed
green, glimpses of stiff tropical vegetation appeared along the banks,
with great clumps of shrubs, whose pale seed-vessels looked like tardy
blossoms. Then we saw on a picturesque point an old plantation, with
stately magnolia avenue, decaying house, and tiny church amid the woods,
reminding me of Virginia; behind it stood a neat encampment of white
tents, "and there," said my companion, "is your future regiment."

Three miles farther brought us to the pretty town of Beaufort, with its
stately houses amid Southern foliage. Reporting to General Saxton, I had
the luck to encounter a company of my destined command, marched in to
be mustered into the United States service. They were unarmed, and all
looked as thoroughly black as the most faithful philanthropist could
desire; there did not seem to be so much as a mulatto among them.
Their coloring suited me, all but the legs, which were clad in a lively
scarlet, as intolerable to my eyes as if I had been a turkey. I saw them
mustered; General Saxton talked to them a little, in his direct, manly
way; they gave close attention, though their faces looked impenetrable.
Then I conversed with some of them. The first to whom I spoke had been
wounded in a small expedition after lumber, from which a party had just
returned, and in which they had been under fire and had done very well.
I said, pointing to his lame arm,

"Did you think that was more than you bargained for, my man?"

His answer came promptly and stoutly,

"I been a-tinking, Mas'r, dot's jess what I went for."

I thought this did well enough for my very first interchange of dialogue
with my recruits.


November 27, 1862.

Thanksgiving-Day; it is the first moment I have had for writing during
these three days, which have installed me into a new mode of life so
thoroughly that they seem three years. Scarcely pausing in New York or
in Beaufort, there seems to have been for me but one step from the
camp of a Massachusetts regiment to this, and that step over leagues of
waves.

It is a holiday wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The
chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seems like New England, but
those alone. The air is full of noisy drumming, and of gunshots; for the
prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is
chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken
windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great
live-oaks, with their hard, shining leaves, and their branches hung with
a universal drapery of soft, long moss, like fringe-trees struck with
grayness. Below, the sandy soil, scantly covered with coarse grass,
bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff,
shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture.
Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and
unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck
and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All
this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' walk beyond
the hovels and the live-oaks will bring one to something so un-Southern
that the whole Southern coast at this moment trembles at the suggestion
of such a thing, the camp of a regiment of freed slaves.

One adapts one's self so readily to new surroundings that already the
full zest of the novelty seems passing away from my perceptions, and I
write these lines in an eager effort to retain all I can. Already I am
growing used to the experience, at first so novel, of living among
five hundred men, and scarce a white face to be seen, of seeing them go
through all their daily processes, eating, frolicking, talking, just as
if they were white. Each day at dress-parade I stand with the customary
folding of the arms before a regimental line of countenances so black
that I can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not; black is
every hand which moves in ready cadence as I vociferate, "Battalion!
Shoulder arms!" nor is it till the line of white officers moves forward,
as parade is dismissed, that I am reminded that my own face is not the
color of coal.

The first few days on duty with a new regiment must be devoted almost
wholly to tightening reins; in this process one deals chiefly with the
officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the
men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations,
wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into
shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of
course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and
they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites.
Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been
for months in camp in the abortive "Hunter Regiment," yet in that
loose kind of way which, like average militia training, is a doubtful
advantage. I notice that some companies, too, look darker than others,
though all are purer African than I expected. This is said to be partly
a geographical difference between the South Carolina and Florida men.
When the Rebels evacuated this region they probably took with them the
house-servants, including most of the mixed blood, so that the residuum
seems very black. But the men brought from Fernandina the other day
average lighter in complexion, and look more intelligent, and they
certainly take wonderfully to the drill.

It needs but a few days to show the absurdity of distrusting the
military availability of these people. They have quite as much average
comprehension as whites of the need of the thing, as much courage (I
doubt not), as much previous knowledge of the gun, and, above all,
a readiness of ear and of imitation, which, for purposes of drill,
counterbalances any defect of mental training. To learn the drill, one
does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager,
active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are the
better. There is no trouble about the drill; they will surpass whites
in that. As to camp-life, they have little to sacrifice; they are better
fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before, and they
appear to have few inconvenient vices. They are simple, docile, and
affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same men who stood
fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late expedition, have
come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly ludicrous manner on being
transferred from one company in the regiment to another.

In noticing the squad-drills I perceive that the men learn less
laboriously than whites that "double, double, toil and trouble," which
is the elementary vexation of the drill-master, that they more rarely
mistake their left for their right, and are more grave and sedate while
under instruction. The extremes of jollity and sobriety, being greater
with them, are less liable to be intermingled; these companies can
be driven with a looser rein than my former one, for they restrain
themselves; but the moment they are dismissed from drill every tongue
is relaxed and every ivory tooth visible. This morning I wandered about
where the different companies were target-shooting, and their glee was
contagious. Such exulting shouts of "Ki! ole man," when some steady
old turkey-shooter brought his gun down for an instant's aim, and then
unerringly hit the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his
piece into the ground at half-cock such guffawing and delight, such
rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the
"Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear a feeble imitation.

Evening. Better still was a scene on which I stumbled to-night.
Strolling in the cool moonlight, I was attracted by a brilliant light
beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or
forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by
name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of
his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a
few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the
last degree, of his adventures in escaping from his master to the Union
vessels; and even I, who have heard the stories of Harriet Tubman, and
such wonderful slave-comedians, never witnessed such a piece of
acting. When I came upon the scene he had just come unexpectedly upon a
plantation-house, and, putting a bold face upon it, had walked up to the
door.

"Den I go up to de white man, berry humble, and say, would he please gib
ole man a mouthful for eat?

"He say he must hab de valeration ob half a dollar.

"Den I look berry sorry, and turn for go away.

"Den he say I might gib him dat hatchet I had.

"Den I say" (this in a tragic vein) "dat I must hab dat hatchet for
defend myself _from de dogs_!"

[Immense applause, and one appreciating auditor says, chuckling, "Dat
was your _arms_, ole man," which brings down the house again.]

"Den he say de Yankee pickets was near by, and I must be very keerful.

"Den I say, 'Good Lord, Mas'r, am dey?'"

Words cannot express the complete dissimulation with which these accents
of terror were uttered, this being precisely the piece of information he
wished to obtain.

Then he narrated his devices to get into the house at night and obtain
some food, how a dog flew at him, how the whole household, black and
white, rose in pursuit, how he scrambled under a hedge and over a high
fence, etc., all in a style of which Gough alone among orators can give
the faintest impression, so thoroughly dramatized was every syllable.

Then he described his reaching the river-side at last, and trying to
decide whether certain vessels held friends or foes.

"Den I see guns on board, and sure sartin he Union boat, and I pop my
head up. Den I been-a-tink [think] Seceshkey hab guns too, and my head
go down again. Den I hide in de bush till morning. Den I open my bundle,
and take ole white shut and tie him on ole pole and wave him, and
ebry time de wind blow, I been-a-tremble, and drap down in de bushes,"
because, being between two fires, he doubted whether friend or foe would
see his signal first. And so on, with a succession of tricks beyond
Moliere, of acts of caution, foresight, patient cunning, which were
listened to with infinite gusto and perfect comprehension by every
listener.

And all this to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire
lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black
faces, eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the
mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the
smoke, and the high moon gleaming faintly through.

Yet to-morrow strangers will remark on the hopeless, impenetrable
stupidity in the daylight faces of many of these very men, the solid
mask under which Nature has concealed all this wealth of mother-wit.
This very comedian is one to whom one might point, as he hoed lazily
in a cotton-field, as a being the light of whose brain had utterly gone
out; and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave
of black beetles, and finding them engaged, with green-room and
foot-lights, in enacting "Poor Pillicoddy." This is their university;
every young Sambo before me, as he turned over the sweet potatoes and
peanuts which were roasting in the ashes, listened with reverence to
the wiles of the ancient Ulysses, and meditated the same. It is Nature's
compensation; oppression simply crushes the upper faculties of the head,
and crowds everything into the perceptive organs. Cato, thou reasonest
well! When I get into any serious scrape, in an enemy's country, may I
be lucky enough to have you at my elbow, to pull me out of it!

The men seem to have enjoyed the novel event of Thanksgiving-Day; they
have had company and regimental prize-shootings, a minimum of speeches
and a maximum of dinner. Bill of fare: two beef-cattle and a thousand
oranges. The oranges cost a cent apiece, and the cattle were Secesh,
bestowed by General Saxby, as they all call him.


December 1, 1862.

How absurd is the impression bequeathed by Slavery in regard to these
Southern blacks, that they are sluggish and inefficient in labor! Last
night, after a hard day's work (our guns and the remainder of our tents
being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready
in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of
those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their
use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the
steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went
at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these
wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then across the
slimy beach at low tide, then up a steep bank, and all in one great
uproar of merriment for two hours. Running most of the time, chattering
all the time, snatching the boards from each other's backs as if they
were some coveted treasure, getting up eager rivalries between different
companies, pouring great choruses of ridicule on the heads of all
shirkers, they made the whole scene so enlivening that I gladly stayed
out in the moonlight for the whole time to watch it. And all this
without any urging or any promised reward, but simply as the most
natural way of doing the thing. The steamboat captain declared that they
unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang
could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the
night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a campfire, cooking a
surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such
a job of work, he answered, with the broadest grin, "O no, Gunnel, da's
no work at all, Gunnel; dat only jess enough for stretch we."


December 2, 1862.

I believe I have not yet enumerated the probable drawbacks to the
success of this regiment, if any. We are exposed to no direct annoyance
from the white regiments, being out of their way; and we have as yet no
discomforts or privations which we do not share with them. I do not as
yet see the slightest obstacle, in the nature of the blacks, to making
them good soldiers, but rather the contrary. They take readily to
drill, and do not object to discipline; they are not especially dull
or inattentive; they seem fully to understand the importance of the
contest, and of their share in it. They show no jealousy or suspicion
towards their officers.

They do show these feelings, however, towards the Government itself; and
no one can wonder. Here lies the drawback to rapid recruiting. Were
this a wholly new regiment, it would have been full to overflowing, I
am satisfied, ere now. The trouble is in the legacy of bitter distrust
bequeathed by the abortive regiment of General Hunter, into which they
were driven like cattle, kept for several months in camp, and then
turned off without a shilling, by order of the War Department. The
formation of that regiment was, on the whole, a great injury to this
one; and the men who came from it, though the best soldiers we have in
other respects, are the least sanguine and cheerful; while those who
now refuse to enlist have a great influence in deterring others. Our
soldiers are constantly twitted by their families and friends with their
prospect of risking their lives in the service, and being paid nothing;
and it is in vain that we read them the instructions of the Secretary
of War to General Saxton, promising them the full pay of soldiers. They
only half believe it.*

*With what utter humiliation were we, their officers, obliged to confess
to them, eighteen months afterwards, that it was their distrust which
was wise, and our faith in the pledges of the United States Government
which was foolishness!

Another drawback is that some of the white soldiers delight in
frightening the women on the plantations with doleful tales of plans for
putting us in the front rank in all battles, and such silly talk,--the
object being perhaps, to prevent our being employed on active service
at all. All these considerations they feel precisely as white men
would,--no less, no more; and it is the comparative freedom from such
unfavorable influences which makes the Florida men seem more bold and
manly, as they undoubtedly do. To-day General Saxton has returned from
Fernandina with seventy-six recruits, and the eagerness of the captains
to secure them was a sight to see. Yet they cannot deny that some of the
very best men in the regiment are South Carolinians.


December 3, 1862.--7 P.M.

What a life is this I lead! It is a dark, mild, drizzling evening, and
as the foggy air breeds sand-flies, so it calls out melodies and strange
antics from this mysterious race of grown-up children with whom my lot
is cast. All over the camp the lights glimmer in the tents, and as I sit
at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and
glee. Boys laugh and shout,--a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some
tent, not an officer's,--a drum throbs far away in another,--wild
kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead
slave-masters,--and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous
sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting,
which they know only as a "shout." These fires are usually enclosed in
a little booth, made neatly of palm-leaves and covered in at top, a
regular native African hut, in short, such as is pictured in books, and
such as I once got up from dried palm-leaves for a fair at home. This
hut is now crammed with men, singing at the top of their voices, in
one of their quaint, monotonous, endless, negro-Methodist chants,
with obscure syllables recurring constantly, and slight variations
interwoven, all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and
clapping of the hands, like castanets. Then the excitement spreads:
inside and outside the enclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others
join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre;
some "heel and toe" tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on,
others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep
steadily circling like dervishes; spectators applaud special strokes of
skill; my approach only enlivens the scene; the circle enlarges,
louder grows the singing, rousing shouts of encouragement come in,
half bacchanalian, half devout, "Wake 'em, brudder!" "Stan' up to 'em,
brudder!"--and still the ceaseless drumming and clapping, in perfect
cadence, goes steadily on. Suddenly there comes a sort of snap, and the
spell breaks, amid general sighing and laughter. And this not rarely and
occasionally, but night after night, while in other parts of the camp
the soberest prayers and exhortations are proceeding sedately.

A simple and lovable people, whose graces seem to come by nature, and
whose vices by training. Some of the best superintendents confirm the
first tales of innocence, and Dr. Zachos told me last night that on his
plantation, a sequestered one, "they had absolutely no vices." Nor have
these men of mine yet shown any worth mentioning; since I took command
I have heard of no man intoxicated, and there has been but one small
quarrel. I suppose that scarcely a white regiment in the army shows
so little swearing. Take the "Progressive Friends" and put them in red
trousers, and I verily believe they would fill a guard-house sooner
than these men. If camp regulations are violated, it seems to be usually
through heedlessness. They love passionately three things besides their
spiritual incantations; namely, sugar, home, and tobacco. This last
affection brings tears to their eyes, almost, when they speak of their
urgent need of pay; they speak of their last-remembered quid as if it
were some deceased relative, too early lost, and to be mourned forever.
As for sugar, no white man can drink coffee after they have sweetened it
to their liking.

I see that the pride which military life creates may cause the
plantation trickeries to diminish. For instance, these men make the most
admirable sentinels. It is far harder to pass the camp lines at night
than in the camp from which I came; and I have seen none of that
disposition to connive at the offences of members of one's own company
which is so troublesome among white soldiers. Nor are they lazy, either
about work or drill; in all respects they seem better material for
soldiers than I had dared to hope.

There is one company in particular, all Florida men, which I certainly
think the finest-looking company I ever saw, white or black; they range
admirably in size, have remarkable erectness and ease of carriage, and
really march splendidly. Not a visitor but notices them; yet they have
been under drill only a fortnight, and a part only two days. They have
all been slaves, and very few are even mulattoes.


December 4, 1862.

"Dwelling in tents, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This condition
is certainly mine,--and with a multitude of patriarchs beside, not to
mention Caesar and Pompey, Hercules and Bacchus.

A moving life, tented at night, this experience has been mine in civil
society, if society be civil before the luxurious forest fires of
Maine and the Adirondack, or upon the lonely prairies of Kansas. But a
stationary tent life, deliberately going to housekeeping under canvas, I
have never had before, though in our barrack life at "Camp Wool" I often
wished for it.

The accommodations here are about as liberal as my quarters there,
two wall-tents being placed end to end, for office and bedroom, and
separated at will by a "fly" of canvas. There is a good board floor and
mop-board, effectually excluding dampness and draughts, and everything
but sand, which on windy days penetrates everywhere. The office
furniture consists of a good desk or secretary, a very clumsy and
disastrous settee, and a remarkable chair. The desk is a bequest of the
slaveholders, and the settee of the slaves, being ecclesiastical in its
origin, and appertaining to the little old church or "praise-house,"
now used for commissary purposes. The chair is a composite structure: I
found a cane seat on a dust-heap, which a black sergeant combined with
two legs from a broken bedstead and two more from an oak-bough. I sit
on it with a pride of conscious invention, mitigated by profound
insecurity. Bedroom furniture, a couch made of gun-boxes covered with
condemned blankets, another settee, two pails, a tin cup, tin basin
(we prize any tin or wooden ware as savages prize iron), and a valise,
regulation size. Seriously considered, nothing more appears needful,
unless ambition might crave another chair for company, and, perhaps,
something for a wash-stand higher than a settee.

To-day it rains hard, and the wind quivers through the closed canvas,
and makes one feel at sea. All the talk of the camp outside is fused
into a cheerful and indistinguishable murmur, pierced through at every
moment by the wail of the hovering plover. Sometimes a face, black or
white, peers through the entrance with some message. Since the light
readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling
of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering
drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my
adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell,
with no bad dreams.

In all pleasant weather the outer "fly" is open, and men pass and
repass, a chattering throng. I think of Emerson's Saadi, "As thou
sittest at thy door, on the desert's yellow floor,"--for these bare
sand-plains, gray above, are always yellow when upturned, and there
seems a tinge of Orientalism in all our life.

Thrice a day we go to the plantation-houses for our meals,
camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in
different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of
William Washington,--William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern
of house-servants, William the noiseless, the observing, the
discriminating, who knows everything that can be got, and how to cook
it. William and his tidy, lady-like little spouse Hetty--a pair of
wedded lovers, if ever I saw one--set our table in their one room,
half-way between an un glazed window and a large wood-fire, such as is
often welcome. Thanks to the adjutant, we are provided with the social
magnificence of napkins; while (lest pride take too high a flight)
our table-cloth consists of two "New York Tribunes" and a "Leslie's
Pictorial." Every steamer brings us a clean table-cloth. Here are we
forever supplied with pork and oysters and sweet potatoes and rice and
hominy and corn-bread and milk; also mysterious griddle-cakes of corn
and pumpkin; also preserves made of pumpkin-chips, and other
fanciful productions of Ethiop art. Mr. E. promised the
plantation-superintendents who should come down here "all the luxuries
of home," and we certainly have much apparent, if little real variety.
Once William produced with some palpitation something fricasseed,
which he boldly termed chicken; it was very small, and seemed in some
undeveloped condition of ante-natal toughness. After the meal he frankly
avowed it for a squirrel.


December 5, 1862.

Give these people their tongues, their feet, and their leisure, and they
are happy. At every twilight the air is full of singing, talking, and
clapping of hands in unison. One of their favorite songs is full of
plaintive cadences; it is not, I think, a Methodist tune, and I wonder
where they obtained a chant of such beauty.

 "I can't stay behind, my Lord, I can't stay behind!
  O, my father is gone, my father is gone,
  My father is gone into heaven, my Lord!
    I can't stay behind!
  Dere's room enough, room enough,
  Room enough in de heaven for de sojer:
    Can't stay behind!"

It always excites them to have us looking on, yet they sing these songs
at all times and seasons. I have heard this very song dimly droning on
near midnight, and, tracing it into the recesses of a cook-house, have
found an old fellow coiled away among the pots and provisions, chanting
away with his "Can't stay behind, sinner," till I made him leave his
song behind.

This evening, after working themselves up to the highest pitch, a party
suddenly rushed off, got a barrel, and mounted some man upon it, who
said, "Gib anoder song, boys, and I'se gib you a speech." After some
hesitation and sundry shouts of "Rise de sing, somebody," and "Stan'
up for Jesus, brud-der," irreverently put in by the juveniles, they got
upon the John Brown song, always a favorite, adding a jubilant verse
which I had never before heard,--"We'll beat Beauregard on de clare
battlefield." Then came the promised speech, and then no less than seven
other speeches by as many men, on a variety of barrels, each orator
being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his
special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the
queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable
enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points
at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded
slaves in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in
comparison. The most eloquent, perhaps, was Corporal Price Lambkin, just
arrived from Fernandina, who evidently had a previous reputation among
them. His historical references were very interesting. He reminded them
that he had predicted this war ever since Fremont's time, to which
some of the crowd assented; he gave a very intelligent account of that
Presidential campaign, and then described most impressively the secret
anxiety of the slaves in Florida to know all about President Lincoln's
election, and told how they all refused to work on the fourth of March,
expecting their freedom to date from that day. He finally brought out
one of the few really impressive appeals for the American flag that I
have ever heard. "Our mas'rs dey hab lib under de flag, dey got dere
wealth under it, and ebryting beautiful for dere chilen. Under it dey
hab grind us up, and put us in dere pocket for money. But de fus' minute
dey tink dat ole flag mean freedom for we colored people, dey pull it
right down, and run up de rag ob dere own." (Immense applause). "But
we'll neber desert de ole flag, boys, neber; we hab lib under it for
eighteen hundred sixty-two years, and we'll die for it now." With which
overpowering discharge of chronology-at-long-range, this most effective
of stump-speeches closed. I see already with relief that there will be
small demand in this regiment for harangues from the officers; give the
men an empty barrel for a stump, and they will do their own exhortation.


December 11, 1862.

Haroun Alraschid, wandering in disguise through his imperial streets,
scarcely happened upon a greater variety of groups than I, in my evening
strolls among our own camp-fires.

Beside some of these fires the men are cleaning their guns or rehearsing
their drill,--beside others, smoking in silence their very scanty supply
of the beloved tobacco,--beside others, telling stories and shouting
with laughter over the broadest mimicry, in which they excel, and in
which the officers come in for a full share. The everlasting "shout"
is always within hearing, with its mixture of piety and polka, and
its castanet-like clapping of the hands. Then there are quieter
prayer-meetings, with pious invocations and slow psalms, "deaconed out"
from memory by the leader, two lines at a time, in a sort of wailing
chant. Elsewhere, there are _conversazioni_ around fires, with a woman
for queen of the circle,--her Nubian face, gay headdress, gilt necklace,
and white teeth, all resplendent in the glowing light. Sometimes the
woman is spelling slow monosyllables out of a primer, a feat which
always commands all ears,--they rightly recognizing a mighty spell,
equal to the overthrowing of monarchs, in the magic assonance of _cat,
hat, pat, bat_, and the rest of it. Elsewhere, it is some solitary old
cook, some aged Uncle Tiff, with enormous spectacles, who is perusing a
hymn-book by the light of a pine splinter, in his deserted cooking booth
of palmetto leaves. By another fire there is an actual dance, red-legged
soldiers doing right-and-left, and "now-lead-de-lady-ober," to the music
of a violin which is rather artistically played, and which may have
guided the steps, in other days, of Barnwells and Hugers. And yonder is
a stump-orator perched on his barrel, pouring out his exhortations to
fidelity in war and in religion. To-night for the first time I have
heard an harangue in a different strain, quite saucy, sceptical, and
defiant, appealing to them in a sort of French materialistic style, and
claiming some personal experience of warfare. "You don't know notin'
about it, boys. You tink you's brave enough; how you tink, if you stan'
clar in de open field,--here you, and dar de Secesh? You's got to hab
de right ting inside o' you. You must hab it 'served [preserved] in you,
like dese yer sour plums dey 'serve in de barr'l; you's got to harden
it down inside o' you, or it's notin'." Then he hit hard at the
religionists: "When a man's got de sperit ob de Lord in him, it weakens
him all out, can't hoe de corn." He had a great deal of broad sense in
his speech; but presently some others began praying vociferously close
by, as if to drown this free-thinker, when at last he exclaimed, "I mean
to fight de war through, an' die a good sojer wid de last kick, dat's
_my_ prayer!" and suddenly jumped off the barrel. I was quite interested
at discovering this reverse side of the temperament, the devotional side
preponderates so enormously, and the greatest scamps kneel and groan in
their prayer-meetings with such entire zest. It shows that there is some
individuality developed among them, and that they will not become too
exclusively pietistic.

Their love of the spelling-book is perfectly inexhaustible,--they
stumbling on by themselves, or the blind leading the blind, with the
same pathetic patience which they carry into everything. The chaplain is
getting up a schoolhouse, where he will soon teach them as regularly as
he can. But the alphabet must always be a very incidental business in a
camp.


December 14.

Passages from prayers in the camp:--

"Let me so lib dat when I die I shall _hab manners_, dat I shall know
what to say when I see my Heabenly Lord."

"Let me lib wid de musket in one hand an' de Bible in de oder,--dat if
I die at de muzzle ob de musket, die in de water, die on de land, I may
know I hab de bressed Jesus in my hand, an' hab no fear."

"I hab lef my wife in de land o' bondage; my little ones dey say eb'ry
night, Whar is my fader? But when I die, when de bressed mornin' rises,
when I shall stan' in de glory, wid one foot on de water an' one foot
on de land, den, O Lord, I shall see my wife an' my little chil'en once
more."

These sentences I noted down, as best I could, beside the glimmering
camp-fire last night. The same person was the hero of a singular little
_contre-temps_ at a funeral in the afternoon. It was our first
funeral. The man had died in hospital, and we had chosen a picturesque
burial-place above the river, near the old church, and beside a little
nameless cemetery, used by generations of slaves. It was a regular
military funeral, the coffin being draped with the American flag, the
escort marching behind, and three volleys fired over the grave. During
the services there was singing, the chaplain deaconing out the hymn in
their favorite way. This ended, he announced his text,--"This poor
man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his
trouble." Instantly, to my great amazement, the cracked voice of the
chorister was uplifted, intoning the text, as if it were the first verse
of another hymn. So calmly was it done, so imperturbable were all the
black countenances, that I half began to conjecture that the chaplain
himself intended it for a hymn, though I could imagine no prospective
rhyme for _trouble_ unless it were approximated by _debbil_, which is,
indeed, a favorite reference, both with the men and with his Reverence.
But the chaplain, peacefully awaiting, gently repeated his text after
the chant, and to my great relief the old chorister waived all further
recitative, and let the funeral discourse proceed.

Their memories are a vast bewildered chaos of Jewish history and
biography; and most of the great events of the past, down to the period
of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses.
There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the
record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may
suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter
at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant, _and may polish wid water_, but
it won't do," in which the sainted Apollos would hardly have recognized
himself.

Just now one of the soldiers came to me to say that he was about to
be married to a girl in Beaufort, and would I lend him a dollar and
seventy-five cents to buy the wedding outfit? It seemed as if matrimony
on such moderate terms ought to be encouraged in these days; and so I
responded to the appeal.


December 16.

To-day a young recruit appeared here, who had been the slave of Colonel
Sammis, one of the leading Florida refugees. Two white companions came
with him, who also appeared to be retainers of the Colonel, and I asked
them to dine. Being likewise refugees, they had stories to tell, and
were quite agreeable: one was English born, the other Floridian, a dark,
sallow Southerner, very well bred. After they had gone, the Colonel
himself appeared, I told him that I had been entertaining his white
friends, and after a while he quietly let out the remark,--

"Yes, one of those white friends of whom you speak is a boy raised on
one of my plantations; he has travelled with me to the North, and passed
for white, and he always keeps away from the negroes."

Certainly no such suspicion had ever crossed my mind.

I have noticed one man in the regiment who would easily pass for
white,--a little sickly drummer, aged fifty at least, with brown eyes
and reddish hair, who is said to be the son of one of our commodores.
I have seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair, or fairer, among fugitive
slaves, but they were usually young children. It touched me far more
to see this man, who had spent more than half a lifetime in this
low estate, and for whom it now seemed too late to be anything but a
"nigger." This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with them
as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred slaveholders.
They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger houses, Sah,"
is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the
lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger,"
is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is
limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle.
This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the
non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in
white regiments. "He needn't try to play de white man ober me," was the
protest of a soldier against his corporal the other day. To counteract
this I have often to remind them that they do not obey their officers
because they are white, but because they are their officers; and guard
duty is an admirable school for this, because they readily understand
that the sergeant or corporal of the guard has for the time more
authority than any commissioned officer who is not on duty. It is
necessary also for their superiors to treat the non-commissioned
officers with careful courtesy, and I often caution the line officers
never to call them "Sam" or "Will," nor omit the proper handle to their
names. The value of the habitual courtesies of the regular army is
exceedingly apparent with these men: an officer of polished manners can
wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer
a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very
courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is
sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber
strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for I feared that freedom and
regimentals would produce precisely that.

They seem the world's perpetual children, docile, gay, and lovable,
in the midst of this war for freedom on which they have intelligently
entered. Last night, before "taps," there was the greatest noise in camp
that I had ever heard, and I feared some riot. On going out, I found the
most tumultuous sham-fight proceeding in total darkness, two companies
playing like boys, beating tin cups for drums. When some of
them saw me they seemed a little dismayed, and came and said,
beseechingly,--"Gunnel, Sah, you hab no objection to we playin',
Sah?"--which objection I disclaimed; but soon they all subsided, rather
to my regret, and scattered merrily. Afterward I found that some other
officer had told them that I considered the affair too noisy, so that
I felt a mild self-reproach when one said, "Cunnel, wish you had let
we play a little longer, Sah." Still I was not sorry, on the whole; for
these sham-fights between companies would in some regiments lead to real
ones, and there is a latent jealousy here between the Florida and South
Carolina men, which sometimes makes me anxious.

The officers are more kind and patient with the men than I should
expect, since the former are mostly young, and drilling tries the
temper; but they are aided by hearty satisfaction in the results already
attained. I have never yet heard a doubt expressed among the officers as
to the _superiority_ of these men to white troops in aptitude for drill
and discipline, because of their imitativeness and docility, and the
pride they take in the service. One captain said to me to-day, "I have
this afternoon taught my men to load-in-nine-times, and they do it
better than we did it in my former company in three months." I can
personally testify that one of our best lieutenants, an Englishman,
taught a part of his company the essential movements of the "school for
skirmishers" in a single lesson of two hours, so that they did them
very passably, though I feel bound to discourage such haste. However,
I "formed square" on the third battalion drill. Three fourths of drill
consist of attention, imitation, and a good ear for time; in the
other fourth, which consists of the application of principles, as, for
instance, performing by the left flank some movement before learned
by the right, they are perhaps slower than better educated men. Having
belonged to five different drill-clubs before entering the army, I
certainly ought to know something of the resources of human awkwardness,
and I can honestly say that they astonish me by the facility with which
they do things. I expected much harder work in this respect.

The habit of carrying burdens on the head gives them erectness of
figure, even where physically disabled. I have seen a woman, with a
brimming water-pail balanced on her head, or perhaps a cup, saucer,
and spoon, stop suddenly, turn round, stoop to pick up a missile, rise
again, fling it, light a pipe, and go through many evolutions with
either hand or both, without spilling a drop. The pipe, by the way,
gives an odd look to a well-dressed young girl on Sunday, but one often
sees that spectacle. The passion for tobacco among our men continues
quite absorbing, and I have piteous appeals for some arrangement
by which they can buy it on credit, as we have yet no sutler. Their
imploring, "Cunnel, we can't _lib_ widout it, Sah," goes to my heart;
and as they cannot read, I cannot even have the melancholy satisfaction
of supplying them with the excellent anti-tobacco tracts of Mr. Trask.


December 19.

Last night the water froze in the adjutant's tent, but not in mine.
To-day has been mild and beautiful. The blacks say they do not feel
the cold so much as the white officers do, and perhaps it is so, though
their health evidently suffers more from dampness. On the other hand,
while drilling on very warm days, they have seemed to suffer more from
the heat than their officers. But they dearly love fire, and at night
will always have it, if possible, even on the minutest scale,--a
mere handful of splinters, that seems hardly more efficacious than a
friction-match. Probably this is a natural habit for the short-lived
coolness of an out-door country; and then there is something delightful
in this rich pine, which burns like a tar-barrel. It was, perhaps,
encouraged by the masters, as the only cheap luxury the slaves had at
hand.

As one grows more acquainted with the men, their individualities emerge;
and I find, first their faces, then their characters, to be as distinct
as those of whites. It is very interesting the desire they show to do
their duty, and to improve as soldiers; they evidently think about it,
and see the importance of the thing; they say to me that we white men
cannot stay and be their leaders always and that they must learn to
depend on themselves, or else relapse into their former condition.

Beside the superb branch of uneatable bitter oranges which decks my
tent-pole, I have to-day hung up a long bough of finger-sponge, which
floated to the river-bank. As winter advances, butterflies gradually
disappear: one species (a _Vanessa_) lingers; three others have vanished
since I came. Mocking-birds are abundant, but rarely sing; once or twice
they have reminded me of the red thrush, but are inferior, as I have
always thought. The colored people all say that it will be much cooler;
but my officers do not think so, perhaps because last winter was so
unusually mild,--with only one frost, they say.


December 20.

Philoprogenitiveness is an important organ for an officer of colored
troops; and I happen to be well provided with it. It seems to be the
theory of all military usages, in fact, that soldiers are to be treated
like children; and these singular persons, who never know their own age
till they are past middle life, and then choose a birthday with such
precision,--"Fifty year old, Sah, de fus' last April,"--prolong the
privilege of childhood.

I am perplexed nightly for countersigns,--their range of proper names is
so distressingly limited, and they make such amazing work of every new
one. At first, to be sure, they did not quite recognize the need of any
variation: one night some officer asked a sentinel whether he had the
countersign yet, and was indignantly answered, "Should tink I hab 'em,
hab 'em for a fortnight"; which seems a long epoch for that magic word
to hold out. To-night I thought I would have "Fredericksburg," in honor
of Burnside's reported victory, using the rumor quickly, for fear of a
contradiction. Later, in comes a captain, gets the countersign for
his own use, but presently returns, the sentinel having pronounced it
incorrect. On inquiry, it appears that the sergeant of the guard, being
weak in geography, thought best to substitute the more familiar word,
"Crockery-ware"; which was, with perfect gravity, confided to all the
sentinels, and accepted without question. O life! what is the fun of
fiction beside thee?

I should think they would suffer and complain these cold nights; but
they say nothing, though there is a good deal of coughing. I should
fancy that the scarlet trousers must do something to keep them warm, and
wonder that they dislike them so much, when they are so much like their
beloved fires. They certainly multiply firelight in any case. I often
notice that an infinitesimal flame, with one soldier standing by it,
looks like quite a respectable conflagration, and it seems as if a group
of them must dispel dampness.


December 21.

To a regimental commander no book can be so fascinating as the
consolidated Morning Report, which is ready about nine, and tells how
many in each company are sick, absent, on duty, and so on. It is one's
newspaper and daily mail; I never grow tired of it. If a single recruit
has come in, I am always eager to see how he looks on paper.

To-night the officers are rather depressed by rumors of Burnside's being
defeated, after all. I am fortunately equable and undepressible; and it
is very convenient that the men know too little of the events of the
war to feel excitement or fear. They know General Saxton and me,--"de
General" and "de Gunnel,"--and seem to ask no further questions. We
are the war. It saves a great deal of trouble, while it lasts, this
childlike confidence; nevertheless, it is our business to educate them
to manhood, and I see as yet no obstacle.

As for the rumor, the world will no doubt roll round, whether Burnside
is defeated or succeeds.


Christmas Day.

    "We'll fight for liberty
  Till de Lord shall call us home;
    We'll soon be free
  Till de Lord shall call us home."

This is the hymn which the slaves at Georgetown, South Carolina, were
whipped for singing when President Lincoln was elected. So said a little
drummer-boy, as he sat at my tent's edge last night and told me his
story; and he showed all his white teeth as he added, "Dey tink _'de
Lord'_ meant for say de Yankees."

Last night, at dress-parade, the adjutant read General Saxton's
Proclamation for the New Year's Celebration. I think they understood it,
for there was cheering in all the company-streets afterwards. Christmas
is the great festival of the year for this people; but, with New Year's
coming after, we could have no adequate programme for to-day, and so
celebrated Christmas Eve with pattern simplicity. We omitted, namely,
the mystic curfew which we call "taps," and let them sit up and burn
their fires, and have their little prayer-meetings as late as they
desired; and all night, as I waked at intervals, I could hear them
praying and "shouting" and clattering with hands and heels. It seemed to
make them very happy, and appeared to be at least an innocent Christmas
dissipation, as compared with some of the convivialities of the
"superior race" hereabouts.


December 26.

The day passed with no greater excitement for the men than
target-shooting, which they enjoyed. I had the private delight of the
arrival of our much-desired surgeon and his nephew, the captain, with
letters and news from home. They also bring the good tidings that
General Saxton is not to be removed, as had been reported.

Two different stands of colors have arrived for us, and will be
presented at New Year's,--one from friends in New York, and the other
from a lady in Connecticut. I see that "Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Weekly" of December 20th has a highly imaginative picture of the
muster-in of our first company, and also of a skirmish on the late
expedition.

I must not forget the prayer overheard last night by one of the
captains: "O Lord! when I tink ob dis Kismas and las' year de Kismas.
Las' Kismas he in de Secesh, and notin' to eat but grits, and no salt
in 'em. Dis year in de camp, and too much victual!" This "too much" is
a favorite phrase out of their grateful hearts, and did not in this case
denote an excess of dinner,--as might be supposed,--but of thanksgiving.


December 29.

Our new surgeon has begun his work most efficiently: he and the chaplain
have converted an old gin-house into a comfortable hospital, with ten
nice beds and straw pallets. He is now, with a hearty professional
faith, looking round for somebody to put into it. I am afraid the
regiment will accommodate him; for, although he declares that these men
do not sham sickness, as he expected, their catarrh is an unpleasant
reality. They feel the dampness very much, and make such a coughing
at dress-parade, that I have urged him to administer a dose of
cough-mixture, all round, just before that pageant. Are the colored
race _tough?_ is my present anxiety; and it is odd that physical
insufficiency, the only discouragement not thrown in our way by the
newspapers, is the only discouragement which finds any place in our
minds. They are used to sleeping indoors in winter, herded before fires,
and so they feel the change. Still, the regiment is as healthy as the
average, and experience will teach us something.*

* A second winter's experience removed all this solicitude, for they
learned to take care of themselves. During the first February the
sick-list averaged about ninety, during the second about thirty, this
being the worst month in the year for blacks.


December 30.

On the first of January we are to have a slight collation, ten oxen or
so, barbecued,--or not properly barbecued, but roasted whole. Touching
the length of time required to "do" an ox, no two housekeepers appear
to agree. Accounts vary from two hours to twenty-four. We shall happily
have enough to try all gradations of roasting, and suit all tastes, from
Miss A.'s to mine. But fancy me proffering a spare-rib, well done, to
some fair lady! What ever are we to do for spoons and forks and plates?
Each soldier has his own, and is sternly held responsible for it by
"Army Regulations." But how provide for the multitude? Is it customary,
I ask you, to help to tenderloin with one's fingers? Fortunately, the
Major is to see to that department. Great are the advantages of military
discipline: for anything perplexing, detail a subordinate.


New Year's Eve.

My housekeeping at home is not, perhaps, on any very extravagant scale.
Buying beefsteak, I usually go to the extent of two or three pounds. Yet
when, this morning at daybreak, the quartermaster called to inquire how
many cattle I would have killed for roasting, I turned over in bed, and
answered composedly, "Ten,--and keep three to be fatted."

Fatted, quotha! Not one of the beasts at present appears to possess
an ounce of superfluous flesh. Never were seen such lean kine. As they
swing on vast spits, composed of young trees, the firelight glimmers
through their ribs, as if they were great lanterns. But no matter, they
are cooking,--nay, they are cooked.

One at least is taken off to cool, and will be replaced tomorrow to warm
up. It was roasted three hours, and well done, for I tasted it. It is
so long since I tasted fresh beef that forgetfulness is possible; but
I fancied this to be successful. I tried to imagine that I liked
the Homeric repast, and certainly the whole thing has been far more
agreeable than was to be expected. The doubt now is, whether I have made
a sufficient provision for my household. I should have roughly guessed
that ten beeves would feed as many million people, it has such a
stupendous sound; but General Saxton predicts a small social party of
five thousand, and we fear that meat will run short, unless they prefer
bone. One of the cattle is so small, we are hoping it may turn out veal.

For drink we aim at the simple luxury of molasses-and-water, a barrel
per company, ten in all. Liberal housekeepers may like to know that for
a barrel of water we allow three gallons of molasses, half a pound of
ginger, and a quart of vinegar,--this last being a new ingredient for my
untutored palate, though all the rest are amazed at my ignorance.
Hard bread, with more molasses, and a dessert of tobacco, complete the
festive repast, destined to cheer, but not inebriate.

On this last point, of inebriation, this is certainly a wonderful camp.
For us it is absolutely omitted from the list of vices. I have never
heard of a glass of liquor in the camp, nor of any effort either to
bring it in or to keep it out. A total absence of the circulating medium
might explain the abstinence,--not that it seems to have that effect
with white soldiers,--but it would not explain the silence. The craving
for tobacco is constant, and not to be allayed, like that of a mother
for her children; but I have never heard whiskey even wished for, save
on Christmas-Day, and then only by one man, and he spoke with a hopeless
ideal sighing, as one alludes to the Golden Age. I am amazed at this
total omission of the most inconvenient of all camp appetites. It
certainly is not the result of exhortation, for there has been no
occasion for any, and even the pledge would scarcely seem efficacious
where hardly anybody can write.

I do not think there is a great visible eagerness for tomorrow's
festival: it is not their way to be very jubilant over anything this
side of the New Jerusalem. They know also that those in this Department
are nominally free already, and that the practical freedom has to be
maintained, in any event, by military success. But they will enjoy it
greatly, and we shall have a multitude of people.


January 1, 1863 (evening).

A happy New Year to civilized people,--mere white folks. Our festival
has come and gone, with perfect success, and our good General has been
altogether satisfied. Last night the great fires were kept smouldering
in the pit, and the beeves were cooked more or less, chiefly
more,--during which time they had to be carefully watched, and the
great spits turned by main force. Happy were the merry fellows who were
permitted to sit up all night, and watch the glimmering flames that
threw a thousand fantastic shadows among the great gnarled oaks. And
such a chattering as I was sure to hear whenever I awoke that night!

My first greeting to-day was from one of the most stylish sergeants, who
approached me with the following little speech, evidently the result of
some elaboration:--

"I tink myself happy, dis New Year's Day, for salute my own Cunnel.
Dis day las' year I was servant to a Gunnel ob Secesh; but now I hab de
privilege for salute my own Cunnel."

That officer, with the utmost sincerity, reciprocated the sentiment.

About ten o'clock the people began to collect by land, and also by
water,--in steamers sent by General Saxton for the purpose; and from
that time all the avenues of approach were thronged. The multitude were
chiefly colored women, with gay handkerchiefs on their heads, and a
sprinkling of men, with that peculiarly respectable look which these
people always have on Sundays and holidays. There were many white
visitors also,--ladies on horseback and in carriages, superintendents
and teachers, officers, and cavalry-men. Our companies were marched to
the neighborhood of the platform, and allowed to sit or stand, as at the
Sunday services; the platform was occupied by ladies and dignitaries,
and by the band of the Eighth Maine, which kindly volunteered for the
occasion; the colored people filled up all the vacant openings in the
beautiful grove around, and there was a cordon of mounted visitors
beyond. Above, the great live-oak branches and their trailing moss;
beyond the people, a glimpse of the blue river.

The services began at half past eleven o'clock, with prayer by our
chaplain, Mr. Fowler, who is always, on such occasions, simple,
reverential, and impressive. Then the President's Proclamation was
read by Dr. W. H. Brisbane, a thing infinitely appropriate, a South
Carolinian addressing South Carolinians; for he was reared among these
very islands, and here long since emancipated his own slaves. Then
the colors were presented to us by the Rev. Mr. French, a chaplain who
brought them from the donors in New York. All this was according to the
programme. Then followed an incident so simple, so touching, so utterly
unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling,
though it gave the keynote to the whole day. The very moment the speaker
had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the
first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose,
close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked and
elderly), into which two women's voices instantly blended, singing, as
if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note
of the song-sparrow.--

  "My Country, 'tis of thee,
  Sweet land of liberty,
  Of thee I sing!"

People looked at each other, and then at us on the platform, to see
whence came this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and
irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of
the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I
motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made
all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last
unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art could
not have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should be so
affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak of it,
after it was ended, tears were everywhere. If you could have heard how
quaint and innocent it was! Old Tiff and his children might have sung
it; and close before me was a little slave-boy, almost white, who seemed
to belong to the party, and even he must join in. Just think of it!--the
first day they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen
which promised anything to their people, and here, while mere spectators
stood in silence, waiting for my stupid words, these simple souls burst
out in their lay, as if they were by their own hearths at home! When
they stopped, there was nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went
on; but the life of the whole day was in those unknown people's song.

Receiving the flags, I gave them into the hands of two fine-looking
men, jet black, as color-guard, and they also spoke, and very
effectively,--Sergeant Prince Rivers and Corporal Robert Sutton. The
regiment sang "Marching Along," and then General Saxton spoke, in his
own simple, manly way, and Mrs. Francis D. Gage spoke very sensibly to
the women, and Judge Stickney, from Florida, added something; then some
gentleman sang an ode, and the regiment the John Brown song, and then
they went to their beef and molasses. Everything was very orderly, and
they seemed to have a very gay time. Most of the visitors had far to go,
and so dispersed before dress-parade, though the band stayed to enliven
it. In the evening we had letters from home, and General Saxton had a
reception at his house, from which I excused myself; and so ended one
of the most enthusiastic and happy gatherings I ever knew. The day was
perfect, and there was nothing but success.

I forgot to say, that, in the midst of the services, it was announced
that General Fremont was appointed Commander-in-Chief,--an announcement
which was received with immense cheering, as would have been almost
anything else, I verily believe, at that moment of high tide. It was
shouted across by the pickets above,--a way in which we often receive
news, but not always trustworthy.


January 3, 1863.

Once, and once only, thus far, the water has frozen in my tent; and
the next morning showed a dense white frost outside. We have still
mocking-birds and crickets and rosebuds, and occasional noonday baths in
the river, though the butterflies have vanished, as I remember to have
observed in Fayal, after December. I have been here nearly six weeks
without a rainy day; one or two slight showers there have been, once
interrupting a drill, but never dress-parade. For climate, by day,
we might be among the isles of Greece,--though it may be my constant
familiarity with the names of her sages which suggests that impression.
For instance, a voice just now called, near my tent,--"Cato, whar's
Plato?" The men have somehow got the impression that it is essential to
the validity of a marriage that they should come to me for permission,
just as they used to go to the master; and I rather encourage these
little confidences, because it is so entertaining to hear them. "Now,
Cunnel," said a faltering swam the other day, "I want for get me one
good lady," which I approved, especially the limitation as to number.
Afterwards I asked one of the bridegroom's friends whether he thought
it a good match. "O yes, Cunnel," said he, in all the cordiality of
friendship, "John's gwine for marry Venus." I trust the goddess will
prove herself a better lady than she appeared during her previous career
upon this planet. But this naturally suggests the isles of Greece again.


January 7.

On first arriving, I found a good deal of anxiety among the officers as
to the increase of desertions, that being the rock on which the "Hunter
Regiment" split. Now this evil is very nearly stopped, and we are every
day recovering the older absentees. One of the very best things that
have happened to us was the half-accidental shooting of a man who
had escaped from the guard-house, and was wounded by a squad sent in
pursuit. He has since died; and this very eve-rung another man, who
escaped with him, came and opened the door of my tent, after being five
days in the woods, almost without food. His clothes were in rags, and he
was nearly starved, poor foolish fellow, so that we can almost dispense
with further punishment. Severe penalties would be wasted on these
people, accustomed as they have been to the most violent passions on the
part of white men; but a mild inexorableness tells on them, just as it
does on any other children. It is something utterly new to me, and it
is thus far perfectly efficacious. They have a great deal of pride as
soldiers, and a very little of severity goes a great way, if it be firm
and consistent. This is very encouraging.

The single question which I asked of some of the plantation
superintendents, on the voyage, was, "Do these people appreciate
_justice_?" If they did it was evident that all the rest would be easy.
When a race is degraded beyond that point it must be very hard to deal
with them; they must mistake all kindness for indulgence, all strictness
for cruelty. With these freed slaves there is no such trouble, not a
particle: let an officer be only just and firm, with a cordial, kindly
nature, and he has no sort of difficulty. The plantation superintendents
and teachers have the same experience, they say; but we have an immense
advantage in the military organization, which helps in two ways: it
increases their self-respect, and it gives us an admirable machinery for
discipline, thus improving both the fulcrum and the lever.

The wounded man died in the hospital, and the general verdict seemed to
be, "Him brought it on heself." Another soldier died of pneumonia on
the same day, and we had the funerals in the evening. It was very
impressive. A dense mist came up, with a moon behind it, and we had only
the light of pine-splinters, as the procession wound along beneath the
mighty, moss-hung branches of the ancient grove. The groups around the
grave, the dark faces, the red garments, the scattered lights, the
misty boughs, were weird and strange. The men sang one of their own wild
chants. Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease
their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the
graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me
that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the
west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods
that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted
gin-house,--a fine well of our own digging, within the camp lines,--a
full allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every
company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial
wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where
the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks
afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned
canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian
lodges I saw in Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our
aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred
and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and
we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since
my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps,
and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like re-entering the
world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred
to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other
camps were white.


January 8.

This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary business, and by
good luck happened upon a review and drill of the white regiments. The
thing that struck me most was that same absence of uniformity, in minor
points, that I noticed at first in my own officers. The best regiments
in the Department are represented among my captains and lieutenants, and
very well represented too; yet it has cost much labor to bring them
to any uniformity in their drill. There is no need of this; for the
prescribed "Tactics" approach perfection; it is never left discretionary
in what place an officer shall stand, or in what words he shall give his
order. All variation would seem to imply negligence. Yet even West Point
occasionally varies from the "Tactics,"--as, for instance, in requiring
the line officers to face down the line, when each is giving the order
to his company. In our strictest Massachusetts regiments this is not
done.

It needs an artist's eye to make a perfect drill-master. Yet the small
points are not merely a matter of punctilio; for, the more perfectly
a battalion is drilled on the parade-ground the more quietly it can be
handled in action. Moreover, the great need of uniformity is this: that,
in the field, soldiers of different companies, and even of different
regiments, are liable to be intermingled, and a diversity of orders may
throw everything into confusion. Confusion means Bull Run.

I wished my men at the review to-day; for, amidst all the rattling and
noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry, there was only one
infantry movement that we have not practised, and that was done by only
one regiment, and apparently considered quite a novelty, though it is
easily taught,

--forming square by Casey's method: forward on centre. It is really just
as easy to drill a regiment as a company,

--perhaps easier, because one has more time to think; but it is just as
essential to be sharp and decisive, perfectly clearheaded, and to put
life into the men. A regiment seems small when one has learned how to
handle it, a mere handful of men; and I have no doubt that a brigade
or a division would soon appear equally small. But to handle either
_judiciously_, ah, that is another affair!

So of governing; it is as easy to govern a regiment as a school or a
factory, and needs like qualities, system, promptness, patience, tact;
moreover, in a regiment one has the aid of the admirable machinery of
the army, so that I see very ordinary men who succeed very tolerably.

Reports of a six months' armistice are rife here, and the thought is
deplored by all. I cannot believe it; yet sometimes one feels very
anxious about the ultimate fate of these poor people. After the
experience of Hungary, one sees that revolutions may go backward; and
the habit of injustice seems so deeply impressed upon the whites, that
it is hard to believe in the possibility of anything better. I dare not
yet hope that the promise of the President's Proclamation will be kept.
For myself I can be indifferent, for the experience here has been its
own daily and hourly reward; and the adaptedness of the freed slaves for
drill and discipline is now thoroughly demonstrated, and must soon be
universally acknowledged. But it would be terrible to see this regiment
disbanded or defrauded.


January 12.

Many things glide by without time to narrate them. On Saturday we had a
mail with the President's Second Message of Emancipation, and the next
day it was read to the men. The words themselves did not stir them very
much, because they have been often told that they were free, especially
on New Year's Day, and, being unversed in politics, they do not
understand, as well as we do, the importance of each additional
guaranty. But the chaplain spoke to them afterwards very effectively,
as usual; and then I proposed to them to hold up their hands and pledge
themselves to be faithful to those still in bondage. They entered
heartily into this, and the scene was quite impressive, beneath the
great oak-branches. I heard afterwards that only one man refused to
raise his hand, saying bluntly that his wife was out of slavery with
him, and he did not care to fight. The other soldiers of his company
were very indignant, and shoved him about among them while marching back
to their quarters, calling him "Coward." I was glad of their exhibition
of feeling, though it is very possible that the one who had thus the
moral courage to stand alone among his comrades might be more reliable,
on a pinch, than some who yielded a more ready assent. But the whole
response, on their part, was very hearty, and will be a good thing
to which to hold them hereafter, at any time of discouragement or
demoralization,--which was my chief reason for proposing it. With
their simple natures it is a great thing to tie them to some definite
committal; they never forget a marked occurrence, and never seem
disposed to evade a pledge.

It is this capacity of honor and fidelity which gives me such entire
faith in them as soldiers. Without it all their religious demonstration
would be mere sentimentality. For instance, every one who visits the
camp is struck with their bearing as sentinels. They exhibit, in this
capacity, not an upstart conceit, but a steady, conscientious devotion
to duty. They would stop their idolized General Saxton, if he attempted
to cross their beat contrary to orders: I have seen them. No feeble or
incompetent race could do this. The officers tell many amusing instances
of this fidelity, but I think mine the best.

It was very dark the other night, an unusual thing here, and the rain
fell in torrents; so I put on my India-rubber suit, and went the rounds
of the sentinels, incognito, to test them. I can only say that I shall
never try such an experiment again and have cautioned my officers
against it. Tis a wonder I escaped with life and limb,--such a charging
of bayonets and clicking of gun-locks. Sometimes I tempted them by
refusing to give any countersign, but offering them a piece of tobacco,
which they could not accept without allowing me nearer than the
prescribed bayonet's distance. Tobacco is more than gold to them, and it
was touching to watch the struggle in their minds; but they always did
their duty at last, and I never could persuade them. One man, as if
wishing to crush all his inward vacillation at one fell stroke, told
me stoutly that he never used tobacco, though I found next day that he
loved it as much as any one of them. It seemed wrong thus to tamper with
their fidelity; yet it was a vital matter to me to know how far it could
be trusted, out of my sight. It was so intensely dark that not more than
one or two knew me, even after I had talked with the very next sentinel,
especially as they had never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can
always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make
the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn
came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself,
and then rather cowed and anxious, fearing to have offended.

It rained harder and harder, and when I had nearly made the rounds I had
had enough of it, and, simply giving the countersign to the challenging
sentinel, undertook to pass within the lines.

"Halt!" exclaimed this dusky man and brother, bringing down his bayonet,
"de countersign not correck."

Now the magic word, in this case, was "Vicksburg," in honor of a rumored
victory. But as I knew that these hard names became quite transformed
upon their lips, "Carthage" being familiarized into Cartridge, and
"Concord" into Corn-cob, how could I possibly tell what shade of
pronunciation my friend might prefer for this particular proper name?

"Vicksburg," I repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as
zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any
supposed predilection of the Ethiop vocal organs.

"Halt dar! Countersign not correck," was the only answer.

The bayonet still maintained a position which, in a military point of
view, was impressive.

I tried persuasion, orthography, threats, tobacco, all in vain. I
could not pass in. Of course my pride was up; for was I to defer to
an untutored African on a point of pronunciation? Classic shades of
Harvard, forbid! Affecting scornful indifference, I tried to edge away,
proposing to myself to enter the camp at some other point, where my
elocution would be better appreciated. Not a step could I stir.

"Halt!" shouted my gentleman again, still holding me at his bayonet's
point, and I wincing and halting.

I explained to him the extreme absurdity of this proceeding, called his
attention to the state of the weather, which, indeed, spoke for itself
so loudly that we could hardly hear each other speak, and requested
permission to withdraw. The bayonet, with mute eloquence, refused the
application.

There flashed into my mind, with more enjoyment in the retrospect than
I had experienced at the time, an adventure on a lecturing tour in other
years, when I had spent an hour in trying to scramble into a country
tavern, after bed-time, on the coldest night of winter. On that occasion
I ultimately found myself stuck midway in the window, with my head in a
temperature of 80 degrees, and my heels in a temperature of -10 degrees,
with a heavy windowsash pinioning the small of my back. However, I had
got safe out of that dilemma, and it was time to put an end to this one,

"Call the corporal of the guard," said I at last, with dignity,
unwilling to make a night of it or to yield my incognito.

"Corporal ob de guard!" he shouted, lustily,--"Post Number Two!" while
I could hear another sentinel chuckling with laughter. This last was a
special guard, placed over a tent, with a prisoner in charge. Presently
he broke silence.

"Who am dat?" he asked, in a stage whisper. "Am he a buckra [white
man]?"

"Dunno whether he been a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my
Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ob
de guard come."

Yet, when that dignitary arrived, and I revealed myself, poor Number Two
appeared utterly transfixed with terror, and seemed to look for nothing
less than immediate execution. Of course I praised his fidelity, and
the next day complimented him before the guard, and mentioned him to his
captain; and the whole affair was very good for them all. Hereafter, if
Satan himself should approach them in darkness and storm, they will take
_him_ for "de Cunnel," and treat him with special severity.


January 13.

In many ways the childish nature of this people shows itself. I have
just had to make a change of officers in a company which has constantly
complained, and with good reason, of neglect and improper treatment.
Two excellent officers have been assigned to them; and yet they sent a
deputation to me in the evening, in a state of utter wretchedness. "We's
bery grieved dis evening, Cunnel; 'pears like we couldn't bear it, to
lose de Cap'n and de Lieutenant, all two togeder." Argument was useless;
and I could only fall back on the general theory, that I knew what was
best for them, which had much more effect; and I also could cite the
instance of another company, which had been much improved by a new
captain, as they readily admitted. So with the promise that the new
officers should not be "savage to we," which was the one thing they
deprecated, I assuaged their woes. Twenty-four hours have passed, and I
hear them singing most merrily all down that company street.

I often notice how their griefs may be dispelled, like those of
children, merely by permission to utter them: if they can tell their
sorrows, they go away happy, even without asking to have anything done
about them. I observe also a peculiar dislike of all _intermediate_
control: they always wish to pass by the company officer, and deal with
me personally for everything. General Saxton notices the same thing
with the people on the plantations as regards himself. I suppose this
proceeds partly from the old habit of appealing to the master against
the overseer. Kind words would cost the master nothing, and he could
easily put off any non-fulfilment upon the overseer. Moreover, the
negroes have acquired such constitutional distrust of white people, that
it is perhaps as much as they can do to trust more than one person at
a tune. Meanwhile this constant personal intercourse is out of the
question in a well-ordered regiment; and the remedy for it is to
introduce by degrees more and more of system, so that their immediate
officers will become all-sufficient for the daily routine.

It is perfectly true (as I find everybody takes for granted) that
the first essential for an officer of colored troops is to gain
their confidence. But it is equally true, though many persons do not
appreciate it, that the admirable methods and proprieties of the regular
army are equally available for all troops, and that the sublimest
philanthropist, if he does not appreciate this, is unfit to command
them.

Another childlike attribute in these men, which is less agreeable, is a
sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel
to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off
flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I
should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs,
they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a
captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more
subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine
sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to
blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I
think they would do it without remonstrance.

Yet their religious spirit grows more beautiful to me in living longer
with them; it is certainly far more so than at first, when it seemed
rather a matter of phrase and habit. It influences them both on the
negative and the positive side. That is, it cultivates the feminine
virtues first,--makes them patient, meek, resigned. This is very evident
in the hospital; there is nothing of the restless, defiant habit of
white invalids. Perhaps, if they had more of this, they would resist
disease better. Imbued from childhood with the habit of submission,
drinking in through every pore that other-world trust which is the one
spirit of their songs, they can endure everything. This I expected;
but I am relieved to find that their religion strengthens them on the
positive side also,--gives zeal, energy, daring. They could easily be
made fanatics, if I chose; but I do not choose. Their whole mood is
essentially Mohammedan, perhaps, in its strength and its weakness; and
I feel the same degree of sympathy that I should if I had a Turkish
command,--that is, a sort of sympathetic admiration, not tending towards
agreement, but towards co-operation. Their philosophizing is often the
highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are
all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular,
after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel
army," in their prayer-meetings. They are certainly evangelizing the
chaplain, who was rather a heretic at the beginning; at least, this is
his own admission. We have recruits on their way from St. Augustine,
where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be
interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder
creed. It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night,
where the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet
glimmering camp, and Orion hangs above my tent-door, giving to me the
sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from
their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in
their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which
always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish Border
Minstrelsy,"--

  "I know moon-rise, I know star-rise;
    Lay dis body down.
  I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
    To lay dis body down.
  I'll walk in de graveyard, I'll walk through de graveyard,
    To lay dis body down.
  I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms;
    Lay dis body down.
  I go to de Judgment in de evening ob de day
    When I lay dis body down;
  And my soul and your soul will meet in de day
    When I lay dis body down."


January 14.

In speaking of the military qualities of the blacks, I should add, that
the only point where I am disappointed is one I have never seen raised
by the most incredulous newspaper critics,--namely, their
physical condition. To be sure they often look magnificently to
my gymnasium-trained eye; and I always like to observe them when
bathing,--such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth
coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea Islanders
appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also of finer
grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are smoother
and far more free from hair. But their weakness is pulmonary; pneumonia
and pleurisy are their besetting ailments; they are easily made
ill,--and easily cured, if promptly treated: childish organizations
again. Guard-duty injures them more than whites, apparently; and
double-quick movements, in choking dust, set them coughing badly. But
then it is to be remembered that this is their sickly season, from
January to March, and that their healthy season will come in summer,
when the whites break down. Still my conviction of the physical
superiority of more highly civilized races is strengthened on the whole,
not weakened, by observing them. As to availability for military drill
and duty in other respects, the only question I ever hear debated among
the officers is, whether they are equal or superior to whites. I have
never heard it suggested that they were inferior, although I expected
frequently to hear such complaints from hasty or unsuccessful officers.

Of one thing I am sure, that their best qualities will be wasted by
merely keeping them for garrison duty. They seem peculiarly fitted for
offensive operations, and especially for partisan warfare; they have so
much dash and such abundant resources, combined with such an Indian-like
knowledge of the country and its ways. These traits have been often
illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters. For instance, I
despatched one of my best lieutenants and my best sergeant with a squad
of men to search a certain plantation, where there were two separate
negro villages. They went by night, and the force was divided. The
lieutenant took one set of huts, the sergeant the other. Before the
lieutenant had reached his first house, every man in the village was
in the woods, innocent and guilty alike. But the sergeant's mode of
operation was thus described by a corporal from a white regiment who
happened to be in one of the negro houses. He said that not a sound was
heard until suddenly a red leg appeared in the open doorway, and a voice
outside said, "Rally." Going to the door, he observed a similar pair of
red legs before every hut, and not a person was allowed to go out,
until the quarters had been thoroughly searched, and the three deserters
found. This was managed by Sergeant Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant,
who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners
and of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished
appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort,
in which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to
Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present
a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for
the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two
thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside
between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter
Regiment," and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring,
where the _chevrons_ on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom
he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer
in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute
authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has
controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me
a daily report of his duties in the camp; if his education reached a
higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the
Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, _wine-black_; his
complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of
rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very
handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and
his figure superior to that of any of our white officers,--being six
feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible
strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a
tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability.
He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a
black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.


January 15.

This morning is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly;
so this whiter of a fortnight is over. I fancy there is a trifle less
coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where
the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr.
---- is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of the
surgeon of a New York regiment, just from Key West, who has had two
hundred cases of the fever. "I suppose he is a skilful, highly educated
man," said I. "Yes," he responded with enthusiasm. "Why, he had seventy
deaths!"--as if that proved his superiority past question.


January 19.

"And first, sitting proud as a lung on his throne, At the head of them
all rode Sir Richard Tyrone."

But I fancy that Sir Richard felt not much better satisfied with his
following than I to-day. J. R. L. said once that nothing was quite
so good as turtle-soup, except mock-turtle; and I have heard officers
declare that nothing was so stirring as real war, except some exciting
parade. To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through
Beaufort and back,--the first appearance of such a novelty on any
stage. They did march splendidly; this all admit. M----'s prediction
was fulfilled: "Will not ---- be in bliss? A thousand men, every one
as black as a coal!" I confess it. To look back on twenty broad
double-ranks of men (for they marched by platoons),--every polished
musket having a black face beside it, and every face set steadily to the
front,--a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future,--it was
something to remember; and when they returned through the same streets,
marching by the flank, with guns at a "support," and each man covering
his file-leader handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine.
The band of the Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town,
and escorted us in. Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in
describing the affair, "And when dat band wheel in before us, and march
on,--my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to
himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see
marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air.

I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about
them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man;
and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of
spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures.
One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards, "We didn't look to
de right nor to de leff. I didn't see notin' in Beaufort. Eb'ry step was
worth a half a dollar." And they all marched as if it were so. They knew
well that they were marching through throngs of officers and soldiers
who had drilled as many months as we had drilled weeks, and whose eyes
would readily spy out every defect. And I must say, that, on the whole,
with a few trivial exceptions, those spectators behaved in a manly
and courteous manner, and I do not care to write down all the handsome
things that were said. Whether said or not, they were deserved; and
there is no danger that our men will not take sufficient satisfaction in
their good appearance. I was especially amused at one of our recruits,
who did not march in the ranks, and who said, after watching the
astonishment of some white soldiers, "De buckra sojers look like a man
who been-a-steal a sheep,"--that is, I suppose, sheepish.

After passing and repassing through the town, we marched to the
parade-ground, and went through an hour's drill, forming squares and
reducing them, and doing other things which look hard on paper, and are
perfectly easy in fact; and we were to have been reviewed by General
Saxton, but he had been unexpectedly called to Ladies Island, and did
not see us at all, which was the only thing to mar the men's enjoyment.
Then we marched back to camp (three miles), the men singing the "John
Brown Song," and all manner of things,--as happy creatures as one can
well conceive.

It is worth mentioning, before I close, that we have just received an
article about "Negro Troops," from the _London Spectator_, which is so
admirably true to our experience that it seems as if written by one of
us. I am confident that there never has been, in any American newspaper,
a treatment of the subject so discriminating and so wise.


January 21.

To-day brought a visit from Major-General Hunter and his staff, by
General Saxton's invitation,--the former having just arrived in the
Department. I expected them at dress-parade, but they came during
battalion drill, rather to my dismay, and we were caught in our old
clothes. It was our first review, and I dare say we did tolerably;
but of course it seemed to me that the men never appeared so ill
before,--just as one always thinks a party at one's own house a failure,
even if the guests seem to enjoy it, because one is so keenly sensitive
to every little thing that goes wrong. After review and drill, General
Hunter made the men a little speech, at my request, and told them that
he wished there were fifty thousand of them. General Saxton spoke to
them afterwards, and said that fifty thousand muskets were on their way
for colored troops. The men cheered both the generals lustily; and they
were complimentary afterwards, though I knew that the regiment could not
have appeared nearly so well as on its visit to Beaufort. I suppose I
felt like some anxious mamma whose children have accidentally appeared
at dancing-school in their old clothes.

General Hunter promises us all we want,--pay when the funds arrive,
Springfield rifled muskets, and blue trousers. Moreover, he has
graciously consented that we should go on an expedition along the coast,
to pick up cotton, lumber, and, above all, recruits. I declined an offer
like this just after my arrival, because the regiment was not drilled or
disciplined, not even the officers; but it is all we wish for now.

  "What care I how black I be?
  Forty pounds will marry me,"

quoth Mother Goose. _Forty rounds_ will marry us to the American Army,
past divorcing, if we can only use them well. Our success or failure may
make or mar the prospects of colored troops. But it is well to remember
in advance that military success is really less satisfactory than any
other, because it may depend on a moment's turn of events, and that
may be determined by some trivial thing, neither to be anticipated nor
controlled. Napoleon ought to have won at Waterloo by all reasonable
calculations; but who cares? All that one can expect is, to do one's
best, and to take with equanimity the fortune of war.




Chapter 3. Up the St. Mary's


If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal
Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister. If not in all respects the
ablest, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and
as black as our good-looking Color-Sergeant, but more heavily built and
with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more
meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the
spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid, and
accurate; and he yearned and pined for intellectual companionship beyond
all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe that he would have
talked all day and all night, for days together, to any officer
who could instruct him, until his companions, at least, fell asleep
exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of Slavery was more
thorough and far-reaching than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its
social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him
nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which
always impressed me chiefly: superficial brilliancy he left to others,
and grasped at the solid truth.

Of course his interest in the war and in the regiment was unbounded; he
did not take to drill with especial readiness, but he was insatiable
of it, and grudged every moment of relaxation. Indeed, he never had
any such moments; his mind was at work all the time, even when he was
singing hymns, of which he had endless store. He was not, however, one
of our leading religionists, but his moral code was solid and reliable,
like his mental processes. Ignorant as he was, the "years that bring the
philosophic mind" had yet been his, and most of my young officers seemed
boys beside him. He was a Florida man, and had been chiefly employed in
lumbering and piloting on the St. Mary's River, which divides Florida
from Georgia. Down this stream he had escaped in a "dug-out," and after
thus finding the way, had returned (as had not a few of my men in other
cases) to bring away wife and child. "I wouldn't have left my child,
Cunnel," he said, with an emphasis that sounded the depths of his strong
nature. And up this same river he was always imploring to be allowed to
guide an expedition.

Many other men had rival propositions to urge, for they gained
self-confidence from drill and guard-duty, and were growing impatient of
inaction. "Ought to go to work, Sa,--don't believe in we lyin' in camp
eatin' up de perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard
with joy. Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled
with topographical memoranda, jotted down by a flickering candle, from
the evening talk of the men,--notes of vulnerable points along
the coast, charts of rivers, locations of pickets. I prized these
conversations not more for what I thus learned of the country than for
what I learned of the men. One could thus measure their various degrees
of accuracy and their average military instinct; and I must say that in
every respect, save the accurate estimate of distances, they stood the
test well. But no project took my fancy so much, after all, as that of
the delegate from the St. Mary's River.

The best peg on which to hang an expedition in the Department of the
South, in those days, was the promise of lumber. Dwelling in the very
land of Southern pine, the Department authorities had to send North for
it, at a vast expense. There was reported to be plenty in the enemy's
country, but somehow the colored soldiers were the only ones who had
been lucky enough to obtain any, thus far, and the supply brought in by
our men, after flooring the tents of the white regiments and our own,
was running low. An expedition of white troops, four companies, with two
steamers and two schooners, had lately returned empty-handed, after a
week's foraging; and now it was our turn. They said the mills were all
burned; but should we go up the St. Mary's, Corporal Sutton was prepared
to offer more lumber than we had transportation to carry. This made
the crowning charm of his suggestion. But there is never any danger of
erring on the side of secrecy, in a military department; and I resolved
to avoid all undue publicity for our plans, by not finally deciding on
any until we should get outside the bar. This was happily approved by
my superior officers, Major-General Hunter and Brigadier-General Saxton;
and I was accordingly permitted to take three steamers, with four
hundred and sixty-two officers and men, and two or three invited
guests, and go down the coast on my own responsibility. We were, in
short, to win our spurs; and if, as among the Araucanians, our spurs
were made of lumber, so much the better. The whole history of the
Department of the South had been defined as "a military picnic," and now
we were to take our share of the entertainment.

It seemed a pleasant share, when, after the usual vexations and delays,
we found ourselves (January 23, 1863) gliding down the full waters of
Beaufort River, the three vessels having sailed at different hours, with
orders to rendezvous at St. Simon's Island, on the coast of Georgia.
Until then, the flagship, so to speak, was to be the "Ben De Ford,"
Captain Hallet,--this being by far the largest vessel, and carrying most
of the men. Major Strong was in command upon the "John Adams," an army
gunboat, carrying a thirty-pound Parrott gun, two ten-pound Parrotts,
and an eight-inch howitzer. Captain Trowbridge (since promoted
Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment) had charge of the famous "Planter,"
brought away from the Rebels by Robert Small; she carried a ten-pound
Parrott gun, and two howitzers. The John Adams was our main reliance.
She was an old East Boston ferry-boat, a "double-ender," admirable for
river-work, but unfit for sea-service. She drew seven feet of water; the
Planter drew only four; but the latter was very slow, and being obliged
to go to St. Simon's by an inner passage, would delay us from the
beginning. She delayed us so much, before the end, that we virtually
parted company, and her career was almost entirely separated from our
own.

From boyhood I have had a fancy for boats, and have seldom been without
a share, usually more or less fractional, in a rather indeterminate
number of punts and wherries. But when, for the first time, I found
myself at sea as Commodore of a fleet of armed steamers,--for even the
Ben De Ford boasted a six-pounder or so,--it seemed rather an unexpected
promotion. But it is a characteristic of army life, that one adapts
one's self, as coolly as in a dream, to the most novel responsibilities.
One sits on court-martial, for instance, and decides on the life of a
fellow-creature, without being asked any inconvenient questions as to
previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall
one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So
I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of
boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and
another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quinsigamond. If
military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility
under any circumstances this would perhaps have been a good opportunity
to begin its practice. But as the "Regulations" clearly contemplated
nothing of the kind, and as I had never met with any precedent which
looked in that direction, I had learned to check promptly all such weak
proclivities.

Captain Hallett proved the most frank and manly of sailors, and did
everything for our comfort. He was soon warm in his praises of the
demeanor of our men, which was very pleasant to hear, as this was the
first time that colored soldiers in any number had been conveyed on
board a transport, and I know of no place where a white volunteer
appears to so much disadvantage. His mind craves occupation, his body is
intensely uncomfortable, the daily emergency is not great enough to call
out his heroic qualities, and he is apt to be surly, discontented, and
impatient even of sanitary rules. The Southern black soldier, on the
other hand, is seldom sea-sick (at least, such is my experience), and,
if properly managed, is equally contented, whether idle or busy; he is,
moreover, so docile that all needful rules are executed with cheerful
acquiescence, and the quarters can therefore be kept clean and
wholesome. Very forlorn faces were soon visible among the officers in
the cabin, but I rarely saw such among the men.

Pleasant still seemed our enterprise, as we anchored at early morning in
the quiet waters of St. Simon's Sound, and saw the light fall softly on
the beach and the low bluffs, on the picturesque plantation-houses which
nestled there, and the graceful naval vessels that lay at anchor before
us. When we afterwards landed the air had that peculiar Mediterranean
translucency which Southern islands wear; and the plantation we visited
had the loveliest tropical garden, though tangled and desolate, which I
have ever seen in the South. The deserted house was embowered In great
blossoming shrubs, and filled with hyacinthine odors, among which
predominated that of the little Chickasaw roses which everywhere bloomed
and trailed around. There were fig-trees and date-palms, crape-myrtles
and wax-myrtles, Mexican agaves and English ivies, japonicas, bananas,
oranges, lemons, oleanders, jonquils, great cactuses, and wild Florida
lilies. This was not the plantation which Mrs. Kemble has since made
historic, although that was on the same island; and I could not waste
much sentiment over it, for it had belonged to a Northern renegade,
Thomas Butler King. Yet I felt then, as I have felt a hundred
times since, an emotion of heart-sickness at this desecration of a
homestead,--and especially when, looking from a bare upper window of the
empty house upon a range of broad, flat, sunny roofs, such as children
love to play on, I thought how that place might have been loved by yet
Innocent hearts, and I mourned anew the sacrilege of war.

I had visited the flag-ship Wabash ere we left Port Royal Harbor, and
had obtained a very kind letter of introduction from Admiral Dupont,
that stately and courtly potentate, elegant as one's ideal French
marquis; and under these credentials I received polite attention from
the naval officers at St. Simon's,--Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Budd, of
the gunboat Potomska, and Acting Master Moses, of the barque Fernandina.
They made valuable suggestions in regard to the different rivers along
the coast, and gave vivid descriptions of the last previous trip up the
St. Mary's undertaken by Captain Stevens, U.S.N., in the gunboat Ottawa,
when he had to fight his way past batteries at every bluff in descending
the narrow and rapid stream. I was warned that no resistance would be
offered to the ascent, but only to our return; and was further cautioned
against the mistake, then common, of underrating the courage of the
Rebels. "It proved impossible to dislodge those fellows from the banks,"
my informant said; "they had dug rifle-pits, and swarmed like hornets,
and when fairly silenced in one direction they were sure to open upon us
from another." All this sounded alarming, but it was nine months since
the event had happened; and although nothing had gone up the river
meanwhile, I counted on less resistance now. And something must be
risked anywhere.

We were delayed all that day in waiting for our consort, and
improved our time by verifying certain rumors about a quantity of new
railroad-iron which was said to be concealed in the abandoned Rebel
forts on St. Simon's and Jekyll Islands, and which would have much value
at Port Royal, if we could unearth it. Some of our men had worked upon
these very batteries, so that they could easily guide us; and by the
additional discovery of a large flat-boat we were enabled to go to work
in earnest upon the removal of the treasure. These iron bars, surmounted
by a dozen feet of sand, formed an invulnerable roof for the magazines
and bomb-proofs of the fort, and the men enjoyed demolishing them far
more than they had relished their construction. Though the day was the
24th of January, 1863, the sun was very oppressive upon the sands; but
all were in the highest spirits, and worked with the greatest zeal. The
men seemed to regard these massive bars as their first trophies; and if
the rails had been wreathed with roses, they could not have been got out
in more holiday style. Nearly a hundred were obtained that day,
besides a quantity of five-inch plank with which to barricade the very
conspicuous pilot-houses of the John Adams. Still another day we were
delayed, and could still keep at this work, not neglecting some foraging
on the island from which horses, cattle, and agricultural implements
were to be removed, and the few remaining colored families transferred
to Fernandina. I had now become quite anxious about the missing
steamboat, as the inner passage, by which alone she could arrive, was
exposed at certain points to fire from Rebel batteries, and it would
have been unpleasant to begin with a disaster. I remember that, as I
stood on deck, in the still and misty evening, listening with strained
senses for some sound of approach, I heard a low continuous noise from
the distance, more wild and desolate than anything in my memory can
parallel. It came from within the vast girdle of mist, and seemed like
the cry of a myriad of lost souls upon the horizon's verge; it was Dante
become audible: and yet it was but the accumulated cries of innumerable
seafowl at the entrance of the outer bay.

Late that night the Planter arrived. We left St. Simon's on the
following morning, reached Fort Clinch by four o'clock, and there
transferring two hundred men to the very scanty quarters of the John
Adams, allowed the larger transport to go into Fernandina, while the
two other vessels were to ascend the St. Mary's River, unless (as proved
inevitable in the end) the defects in the boiler of the Planter should
oblige her to remain behind. That night I proposed to make a sort of
trial-trip up stream, as far as Township landing, some fifteen miles,
there to pay our respects to Captain Clark's company of cavalry, whose
camp was reported to lie near by. This was included in Corporal Sutton's
programme, and seemed to me more inviting, and far more useful to
the men, than any amount of mere foraging. The thing really desirable
appeared to be to get them under fire as soon as possible, and to teach
them, by a few small successes, the application of what they had learned
in camp-.

I had ascertained that the camp of this company lay five miles from
the landing, and was accessible by two roads, one of which was a
lumber-path, not commonly used, but which Corporal Sutton had helped to
construct, and along which he could easily guide us. The plan was to go
by night, surround the house and negro cabins at the landing (to prevent
an alarm from being given), then to take the side path, and if all went
well, to surprise the camp; but if they got notice of our approach,
through their pickets, we should, at worst, have a fight, in which the
best man must win.

The moon was bright, and the river swift, but easy of navigation thus
far. Just below Township I landed a small advance force, to surround
the houses silently. With them went Corporal Sutton; and when, after
rounding the point, I went on shore with a larger body of men, he met
me with a silent chuckle of delight, and with the information that there
was a negro in a neighboring cabin who had just come from the Rebel
camp, and could give the latest information. While he hunted up this
valuable auxiliary, I mustered my detachment, winnowing out the men who
had coughs (not a few), and sending them ignominiously on board again: a
process I had regularly to perform, during this first season of catarrh,
on all occasions where quiet was needed. The only exception tolerated at
this time was in the case of one man who offered a solemn pledge, that,
if unable to restrain his cough, he would lie down on the ground,
scrape a little hole, and cough into it unheard. The ingenuity of this
proposition was irresistible, and the eager patient was allowed to pass
muster.

It was after midnight when we set off upon our excursion. I had about
a hundred men, marching by the flank, with a small advanced guard,
and also a few flankers, where the ground permitted. I put my Florida
company at the head of the column, and had by my side Captain Metcalf,
an excellent officer, and Sergeant Mclntyre, his first sergeant. We
plunged presently in pine woods, whose resinous smell I can still
remember. Corporal Sutton marched near me, with his captured negro
guide, whose first fear and sullenness had yielded to the magic news of
the President's Proclamation, then just issued, of which Governor Andrew
had sent me a large printed supply;--we seldom found men who could read
it, but they all seemed to feel more secure when they held it in their
hands. We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of
the frogs in a neighboring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a
dog, as we passed the hut of some "cracker." This yelping always made
Corporal Sutton uneasy; dogs are the detective officers of Slavery's
police.

We had halted once or twice to close up the ranks, and had marched some
two miles, seeing and hearing nothing more. I had got all I could out of
our new guide, and was striding on, rapt in pleasing contemplation.
All had gone so smoothly that I had merely to fancy the rest as being
equally smooth. Already I fancied our little detachment bursting out
of the woods, in swift surprise, upon the Rebel quarters,--already
the opposing commander, after hastily firing a charge or two from his
revolver (of course above my head), had yielded at discretion, and was
gracefully tendering, in a stage attitude, his unavailing sword,--when
suddenly--

There was a trampling of feet among the advanced guard as they came
confusedly to a halt, and almost at the same instant a more ominous
sound, as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight
outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more
bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to
it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader
of an approaching party mounted on a white horse and reining up in the
pathway; others, again, declare that he drew a pistol from the holster
and took aim; others heard the words, "Charge in upon them! Surround
them!" But all this was confused by the opening rifle-shots of our
advanced guard, and, as clear observation was impossible, I made the
men fix their bayonets and kneel in the cover on each side the pathway,
and I saw with delight the brave fellows, with Sergeant Mclntyre at
their head, settling down in the grass as coolly and warily as if wild
turkeys were the only game. Perhaps at the first shot a man fell at
my elbow. I felt it no more than if a tree had fallen,--I was so busy
watching my own men and the enemy, and planning what to do next. Some of
our soldiers, misunderstanding the order, "Fix bayonets," were actually
_charging_ with them, dashing off into the dim woods, with nothing to
charge at but the vanishing tail of an imaginary horse,--for we could
really see nothing. This zeal I noted with pleasure, and also with
anxiety, as our greatest danger was from confusion and scattering; and
for infantry to pursue cavalry would be a novel enterprise. Captain
Metcalf stood by me well in keeping the men steady, as did Assistant
Surgeon Minor, and Lieutenant, now Captain, Jackson. How the men in the
rear were behaving I could not tell,--not so coolly, I afterwards found,
because they were more entirely bewildered, supposing, until the shots
came, that the column had simply halted for a moment's rest, as had
been done once or twice before. They did not know who or where their
assailants might be, and the fall of the man beside me created a
hasty rumor that I was killed, so that it was on the whole an alarming
experience for them. They kept together very tolerably, however, while
our assailants, dividing, rode along on each side through the open
pine-barren, firing into our ranks, but mostly over the heads of
the men. My soldiers in turn fired rapidly,--too rapidly, being yet
beginners,--and it was evident that, dim as it was, both sides had
opportunity to do some execution.

I could hardly tell whether the fight had lasted ten minutes or an hour,
when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the
order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them
desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was
heard to mutter, indignantly, "Why de Cunnel order _Cease firing_, when
de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day?" Every incidental
occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without
interrupting the main course of thought. Thus I know, that, in one of
the pauses of the affair, there came wailing through the woods a cracked
female voice, as if calling back some stray husband who had run out to
join in the affray, "John, John, are you going to leave me, John? Are
you going to let me and the children be killed, John?" I suppose the
poor thing's fears of gunpowder were very genuine; but it was such
a wailing squeak, and so infinitely ludicrous, and John was probably
ensconced so very safely in some hollow tree, that I could see some of
the men showing all their white teeth in the very midst of the fight.
But soon this sound, with all others, had ceased, and left us in
peaceful possession of the field.

I have made the more of this little affair because it was the first
stand-up fight in which my men had been engaged, though they had been
under fire, in an irregular way, in their small early expeditions. To me
personally the event was of the greatest value: it had given us all an
opportunity to test each other, and our abstract surmises were changed
into positive knowledge. Hereafter it was of small importance what
nonsense might be talked or written about colored troops; so long
as mine did not flinch, it made no difference to me. My brave young
officers, themselves mostly new to danger, viewed the matter much as
I did; and yet we were under bonds of life and death to form a correct
opinion, which was more than could be said of the Northern editors, and
our verdict was proportionately of greater value.

I was convinced from appearances that we had been victorious, so far,
though I could not suppose that this would be the last of it. We knew
neither the numbers of the enemy, nor their plans, nor their present
condition: whether they had surprised us or whether we had surprised
them was all a mystery. Corporal Sutton was urgent to go on and complete
the enterprise. All my impulses said the same thing; but then I had
the most explicit injunctions from General Saxton to risk as little as
possible in this first enterprise, because of the fatal effect on public
sentiment of even an honorable defeat. We had now an honorable victory,
so far as it went; the officers and men around me were in good spirits,
but the rest of the column might be nervous; and it seemed so important
to make the first fight an entire success, that I thought it wiser to
let well alone; nor have I ever changed this opinion. For one's self,
Montrose's verse may be well applied, "To win or lose it all." But one
has no right to deal thus lightly with the fortunes of a race, and that
was the weight which I always felt as resting on our action. If my raw
infantry force had stood unflinchingly a night-surprise from "de
boss cavalry," as they reverentially termed them, I felt that a good
beginning had been made. All hope of surprising the enemy's camp was now
at an end; I was willing and ready to fight the cavalry over again, but
it seemed wiser that we, not they, should select the ground.

Attending to the wounded, therefore, and making as we best could
stretchers for those who were to be carried, including the remains
of the man killed at the first discharge (Private William Parsons of
Company G), and others who seemed at the point of death, we marched
through the woods to the landing,--expecting at every moment to be
involved in another fight. This not occurring, I was more than ever
satisfied that we had won a victory; for it was obvious that a mounted
force would not allow a detachment of infantry to march two miles
through open woods by night without renewing the fight, unless they
themselves had suffered a good deal. On arrival at the landing, seeing
that there was to be no immediate affray, I sent most of the men on
board, and called for volunteers to remain on shore with me and hold the
plantation-house till morning. They eagerly offered; and I was glad to
see them, when posted as sentinels by Lieutenants Hyde and Jackson, who
stayed with me, pace their beats as steadily and challenge as coolly
as veterans, though of course there was some powder wasted on imaginary
foes. Greatly to my surprise, however, we had no other enemies to
encounter. We did not yet know that we had killed the first lieutenant
of the cavalry, and that our opponents had retreated to the woods in
dismay, without daring to return to their camp. This at least was the
account we heard from prisoners afterwards, and was evidently the tale
current in the neighborhood, though the statements published in Southern
newspapers did not correspond. Admitting the death of Lieutenant Jones,
the Tallahassee Floridian of February 14th stated that "Captain Clark,
finding the enemy in strong force, fell back with his command to camp,
and removed his ordnance and commissary and other stores, with twelve
negroes on their way to the enemy, captured on that day."

In the morning, my invaluable surgeon, Dr. Rogers, sent me his report
of killed and wounded; and I have been since permitted to make the
following extracts from his notes: "One man killed instantly by ball
through the heart, and seven wounded, one of whom will die. Braver men
never lived. One man with two bullet-holes through the large muscles of
the shoulders and neck brought off from the scene of action, two miles
distant, two muskets; and not a murmur has escaped his lips. Another,
Robert Sutton, with three wounds,--one of which, being on the skull, may
cost him his life,--would not report himself till compelled to do so by
his officers. While dressing his wounds, he quietly talked of what they
had done, and of what they yet could do. To-day I have had the Colonel
_order_ him to obey me. He is perfectly quiet and cool, but takes this
whole affair with the religious bearing of a man who realizes that
freedom is sweeter than life. Yet another soldier did not report himself
at all, but remained all night on guard, and possibly I should not
have known of his having had a buck-shot in his shoulder, if some duty
requiring a sound shoulder had not been required of him to-day." This
last, it may be added, had persuaded a comrade to dig out the buck-shot,
for fear of being ordered on the sick-list. And one of those who were
carried to the vessel--a man wounded through the lungs--asked only if I
were safe, the contrary having been reported. An officer may be pardoned
some enthusiasm for such men as these.

The anxious night having passed away without an attack, another problem
opened with the morning. For the first time, my officers and men found
themselves in possession of an enemy's abode; and though there was but
little temptation to plunder, I knew that I must here begin to draw
the line. I had long since resolved to prohibit absolutely all
indiscriminate pilfering and wanton outrage, and to allow nothing to
be taken or destroyed but by proper authority. The men, to my great
satisfaction, entered into this view at once, and so did (perhaps a
shade less readily, in some cases) the officers. The greatest trouble
was with the steamboat hands, and I resolved to let them go ashore as
little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however,
before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used
only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a pianoforte,
for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made
up my mind, in accordance with the orders given to naval commanders in
that department,* to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from
which I should be covertly attacked, and nothing else; and as this house
was destined to the flames, I should have left the piano in it, but for
the seductions of that box. With such a receptacle all ready, even to
the cover, it would have seemed like flying in the face of Providence
not to put the piano in. I ordered it removed, therefore, and afterwards
presented it to the school for colored children at Fernandina. This
I mention because it was the only article of property I ever took,
or knowingly suffered to be taken, in the enemy's country, save for
legitimate military uses, from first to last; nor would I have taken
this, but for the thought of the school, and, as aforesaid, the
temptation of the box. If any other officer has been more rigid, with
equal opportunities, let him cast the first stone.

* "It is my desire to avoid the destruction of private property, unless
used for picket or guard-stations, or for other military purposes, by
the enemy.... Of course, if fired upon from any place, it is your duty,
if possible, to destroy it." Letter of ADMIRAL DUPONT, commanding South
Atlantic Squadron, to LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER HUGHES of United States
Gunboat Mohawk, Fernandina Harbor.

I think the zest with which the men finally set fire to the house at
my order was enhanced by this previous abstemiousness; but there is a
fearful fascination in the use of fire, which every child knows in the
abstract, and which I found to hold true in the practice. On our way
down river we had opportunity to test this again.

The ruined town of St. Mary's had at that time a bad reputation,
among both naval and military men. Lying but a short distance above
Fernandina, on the Georgia side, it was occasionally visited by our
gunboats. I was informed that the only residents of the town were
three old women, who were apparently kept there as spies,--that, on
our approach, the aged crones would come out and wave white
handkerchiefs,--that they would receive us hospitably, profess to be
profoundly loyal, and exhibit a portrait of Washington,--that they
would solemnly assure us that no Rebel pickets had been there for
many weeks,--but that in the adjoining yard we should find fresh
horse-tracks, and that we should be fired upon by guerillas the moment
we left the wharf. My officers had been much excited by these tales; and
I had assured them that, if this programme were literally carried out,
we would straightway return and burn the town, or what was left of it,
for our share. It was essential to show my officers and men that, while
rigid against irregular outrage, we could still be inexorable against
the enemy.

We had previously planned to stop at this town, on our way down river,
for some valuable lumber which we had espied on a wharf; and gliding
down the swift current, shelling a few bluffs as we passed, we soon
reached it. Punctual as the figures in a panorama appeared the old
ladies with their white handkerchiefs. Taking possession of the town,
much of which had previously been destroyed by the gunboats, and
stationing the color-guard, to their infinite delight, in the cupola
of the most conspicuous house, I deployed skirmishers along the exposed
suburb, and set a detail of men at work on the lumber. After a stately
and decorous interview with the queens of society of St. Mary's,--is
it Scott who says that nothing improves the manners like piracy?--I
peacefully withdrew the men when the work was done. There were faces of
disappointment among the officers,--for all felt a spirit of mischief
after the last night's adventure,--when, just as we had fairly swung out
into the stream and were under way, there came, like the sudden burst of
a tropical tornado, a regular little hail-storm of bullets into the open
end of the boat, driving every gunner in an instant from his post, and
surprising even those who were looking to be surprised. The shock was
but for a second; and though the bullets had pattered precisely like
the sound of hail upon the iron cannon, yet nobody was hurt. With very
respectable promptness, order was restored, our own shells were flying
into the woods from which the attack proceeded, and we were steaming up
to the wharf again, according to promise.

Who shall describe the theatrical attitudes assumed by the old ladies
as they reappeared at the front-door,--being luckily out of direct
range,--and set the handkerchiefs in wilder motion than ever? They
brandished them, they twirled them after the manner of the domestic
mop, they clasped their hands, handkerchiefs included. Meanwhile their
friends in the wood popped away steadily at us, with small effect; and
occasionally an invisible field-piece thundered feebly from another
quarter, with equally invisible results. Reaching the wharf, one
company, under Lieutenant (now Captain) Danil-son, was promptly deployed
in search of our assailants, who soon grew silent. Not so the old
ladies, when I announced to them my purpose, and added, with extreme
regret, that, as the wind was high, I should burn only that half of
the town which lay to leeward of their house, which did not, after
all, amount to much. Between gratitude for this degree of mercy, and
imploring appeals for greater, the treacherous old ladies manoeuvred
with clasped hands and demonstrative handkerchiefs around me, impairing
the effect of their eloquence by constantly addressing me as "Mr.
Captain"; for I have observed, that, while the sternest officer is
greatly propitiated by attributing to him a rank a little higher than
his own, yet no one is ever mollified by an error in the opposite
direction. I tried, however, to disregard such low considerations,
and to strike the correct mean between the sublime patriot and the
unsanctified incendiary, while I could find no refuge from weak
contrition save in greater and greater depths of courtesy; and so
melodramatic became our interview that some of the soldiers still
maintain that "dem dar ole Secesh women been a-gwine for kiss de
Cunnel," before we ended. But of this monstrous accusation I wish to
register an explicit denial, once for all.

Dropping down to Fernandina unmolested after this affair, we were kindly
received by the military and naval commanders,--Colonel Hawley, of
the Seventh Connecticut (now Brigadier-General Hawley), and
Lieutenant-Commander Hughes, of the gunboat Mohawk. It turned out very
opportunely that both of these officers had special errands to suggest
still farther up the St. Mary's, and precisely in the region where I
wished to go. Colonel Hawley showed me a letter from the War Department,
requesting him to ascertain the possibility of obtaining a supply
of brick for Fort Clinch from the brickyard which had furnished the
original materials, but which had not been visited since the perilous
river-trip of the Ottawa. Lieutenant Hughes wished to obtain information
for the Admiral respecting a Rebel steamer,--the Berosa,--said to
be lying somewhere up the river, and awaiting her chance to run the
blockade. I jumped at the opportunity. Berosa and brickyard,--both were
near Wood-stock, the former home of Corporal Sutton; he was ready
and eager to pilot us up the river; the moon would be just right that
evening, setting at 3h. 19m. A.M.; and our boat was precisely the one
to undertake the expedition. Its double-headed shape was just what was
needed in that swift and crooked stream; the exposed pilot-houses had
been tolerably barricaded with the thick planks from St. Simon's; and
we further obtained some sand-bags from Fort Clinch, through the aid of
Captain Sears, the officer in charge, who had originally suggested the
expedition after brick. In return for this aid, the Planter was sent
back to the wharf at St. Mary's, to bring away a considerable supply
of the same precious article, which we had observed near the wharf.
Meanwhile the John Adams was coaling from naval supplies, through the
kindness of Lieutenant Hughes; and the Ben De Ford was taking in
the lumber which we had yesterday brought down. It was a great
disappointment to be unable to take the latter vessel up the river; but
I was unwillingly convinced that, though the depth of water might be
sufficient, yet her length would be unmanageable in the swift current
and sharp turns. The Planter must also be sent on a separate cruise,
as her weak and disabled machinery made her useless for my purpose. Two
hundred men were therefore transferred, as before, to the narrow hold
of the John Adams, in addition to the company permanently stationed on
board to work the guns. At seven o'clock on the evening of January 29th,
beneath a lovely moon, we steamed up the river.

Never shall I forget the mystery and excitement of that night. I know
nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown
river, leading far into an enemy's country, where one glides in the
dim moonlight between dark hills and meadows, each turn of the channel
making it seem like an inland lake, and cutting you off as by a
barrier from all behind,--with no sign of human life, but an occasional
picket-fire left glimmering beneath the bank, or the yelp of a dog from
some low-lying plantation. On such occasions every nerve is strained to
its utmost tension; all dreams of romance appear to promise immediate
fulfilment; all lights on board the vessel are obscured, loud voices
are hushed; you fancy a thousand men on shore, and yet see nothing; the
lonely river, unaccustomed to furrowing keels, lapses by the vessel with
a treacherous sound; and all the senses are merged in a sort of anxious
trance. Three tunes I have had in full perfection this fascinating
experience; but that night was the first, and its zest was the keenest.
It will come back to me in dreams, if I live a thousand years.

I feared no attack during our ascent,--that danger was for our return;
but I feared the intricate navigation of the river, though I did not
fully know, till the actual experience, how dangerous it was. We passed
without trouble far above the scene of our first fight,--the Battle
of the Hundred Pines, as my officers had baptized it; and ever, as we
ascended, the banks grew steeper, the current swifter, the channel more
tortuous and more encumbered with projecting branches and drifting wood.
No piloting less skilful than that of Corporal Sutton and his mate,
James Bezzard, could have carried us through, I thought; and no
side-wheel steamer less strong than a ferry-boat could have borne the
crash and force with which we struck the wooded banks of the river. But
the powerful paddles, built to break the Northern ice, could crush the
Southern pine as well; and we came safely out of entanglements that at
first seemed formidable. We had the tide with us, which makes steering
far more difficult; and, in the sharp angles of the river, there was
often no resource but to run the bow boldly on shore, let the stern
swing round, and then reverse the motion. As the reversing machinery
was generally out of order, the engineer stupid or frightened, and
the captain excited, this involved moments of tolerably concentrated
anxiety. Eight times we grounded in the upper waters, and once lay
aground for half an hour; but at last we dropped anchor before the
little town of Woodstock, after moonset and an hour before daybreak,
just as I had planned, and so quietly that scarcely a dog barked, and
not a soul in the town, as we afterwards found, knew of our arrival.

As silently as possible, the great flat-boat which we had brought from
St. Simon's was filled with men. Major Strong was sent on shore with
two companies,--those of Captain James and Captain Metcalf,--with
instructions to surround the town quietly, allow no one to leave it,
molest no one, and hold as temporary prisoners every man whom he found.
I watched them push off into the darkness, got the remaining force ready
to land, and then paced the deck for an hour in silent watchfulness,
waiting for rifle-shots. Not a sound came from the shore, save
the barking of dogs and the morning crow of cocks; the time seemed
interminable; but when daylight came, I landed, and found a pair of
scarlet trousers pacing on their beat before every house in the village,
and a small squad of prisoners, stunted and forlorn as Falstaff's ragged
regiment, already hi hand. I observed with delight the good demeanor
of my men towards these forlorn Anglo-Saxons, and towards the more
tumultuous women. Even one soldier, who threatened to throw an old
termagant into the river, took care to append the courteous epithet
"Madam."

I took a survey of the premises. The chief house, a pretty one with
picturesque outbuildings, was that of Mrs. A., who owned the mills
and lumber-wharves adjoining. The wealth of these wharves had not been
exaggerated. There was lumber enough to freight half a dozen steamers,
and I half regretted that I had agreed to take down a freight of
bricks instead. Further researches made me grateful that I had already
explained to my men the difference between public foraging and private
plunder. Along the river-bank I found building after building crowded
with costly furniture, all neatly packed, just as it was sent up from
St. Mary's when that town was abandoned. Pianos were a drug; china,
glass-ware, mahogany, pictures, all were here. And here were my men, who
knew that their own labor had earned for their masters these luxuries,
or such as these; their own wives and children were still sleeping on
the floor, perhaps, at Beaufort or Fernandina; and yet they submitted,
almost without a murmur, to the enforced abstinence. Bed and bedding
for our hospitals they might take from those store-rooms,--such as the
surgeon selected,--also an old flag which we found in a corner, and an
old field-piece (which the regiment still possesses),--but after this
the doors were closed and left unmolested. It cost a struggle to some
of the men, whose wives were destitute, I know; but their pride was very
easily touched, and when this abstinence was once recognized as a rule,
they claimed it as an honor, in this and all succeeding expeditions.
I flatter myself that, if they had once been set upon wholesale
plundering, they would have done it as thoroughly as their betters; but
I have always been infinitely grateful, both for the credit and for
the discipline of the regiment,--as well as for the men's subsequent
lives,--that the opposite method was adopted.

When the morning was a little advanced, I called on Mrs. A., who
received me in quite a stately way at her own door with "To what am
I indebted for the honor of this visit, Sir?" The foreign name of
the family, and the tropical look of the buildings, made it seem (as,
indeed, did all the rest of the adventure) like a chapter out of "Amyas
Leigh"; but as I had happened to hear that the lady herself was a
Philadelphian, and her deceased husband a New-Yorker, I could not feel
even that modicum of reverence due to sincere Southerners. However, I
wished to present my credentials; so, calling up my companion, I said
that I believed she had been previously acquainted with Corporal Robert
Sutton? I never saw a finer bit of unutterable indignation than came
over the face of my hostess, as she slowly recognized him. She drew
herself up, and dropped out the monosyllables of her answer as if they
were so many drops of nitric acid. "Ah," quoth my lady, "we called him
Bob!"

It was a group for a painter. The whole drama of the war seemed to
reverse itself in an instant, and my tall, well-dressed, imposing,
philosophic Corporal dropped down the immeasurable depth into a mere
plantation "Bob" again. So at least in my imagination; not to that
person himself. Too essentially dignified in his nature to be moved by
words where substantial realities were in question, he simply turned
from the lady, touched his hat to me, and asked if I would wish to see
the slave-jail, as he had the keys in his possession.

If he fancied that I was in danger of being overcome by blandishments,
and needed to be recalled to realities, it was a master-stroke.

I must say that, when the door of that villanous edifice was thrown open
before me, I felt glad that my main interview with its lady proprietor
had passed before I saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern
corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place
among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the door
was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening
a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late
proprietor, my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain.
We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, two of
which had smaller as well as larger holes, evidently for the feet of
women or children. In a building near by we found something far more
complicated, which was perfectly unintelligible till the men explained
all its parts: a machine so contrived that a person once imprisoned in
it could neither sit, stand, nor lie, but must support the body
half raised, in a position scarcely endurable. I have since bitterly
reproached myself for leaving this piece of ingenuity behind; but it
would have cost much labor to remove it, and to bring away the other
trophies seemed then enough. I remember the unutterable loathing with
which I leaned against the door of that prison-house; I had thought
myself seasoned to any conceivable horrors of Slavery, but it seemed as
if the visible presence of that den of sin would choke me. Of course
it would have been burned to the ground by us, but that this would have
involved the sacrifice of every other building and all the piles of
lumber, and for the moment it seemed as if the sacrifice would be
righteous. But I forbore, and only took as trophies the instruments of
torture and the keys of the jail.

We found but few colored people in this vicinity; some we brought away
with us, and an old man and woman preferred to remain. All the white
males whom we found I took as hostages, in order to shield us, if
possible, from attack on our way down river, explaining to them that
they would be put on shore when the dangerous points were passed. I
knew that their wives could easily send notice of this fact to the
Rebel forces along the river. My hostages were a forlorn-looking set of
"crackers," far inferior to our soldiers in _physique_, and yet quite
equal, the latter declared, to the average material of the Southern
armies. None were in uniform, but this proved nothing as to their being
soldiers. One of them, a mere boy, was captured at his own door, with
gun in hand. It was a fowling-piece, which he used only, as his mother
plaintively assured me, "to shoot little birds with." As the guileless
youth had for this purpose loaded the gun with eighteen buck-shot, we
thought it justifiable to confiscate both the weapon and the owner, in
mercy to the birds.

We took from this place, for the use of the army, a flock of some thirty
sheep, forty bushels of rice, some other provisions, tools, oars, and
a little lumber, leaving all possible space for the bricks which we
expected to obtain just below. I should have gone farther up the river,
but for a dangerous boom which kept back a great number of logs in a
large brook that here fell into the St. Mary's; the stream ran with
force, and if the Rebels had wit enough to do it, they might in ten
minutes so choke the river with drift-wood as infinitely to enhance
our troubles. So we dropped down stream a mile or two, found the very
brickyard from which Fort Clinch had been constructed,--still stored
with bricks, and seemingly unprotected. Here Sergeant Rivers again
planted his standard, and the men toiled eagerly, for several hours, in
loading our boat to the utmost with the bricks. Meanwhile we questioned
black and white witnesses, and learned for the first tune that the
Rebels admitted a repulse at Township Landing, and that Lieutenant Jones
and ten of their number were killed,--though this I fancy to have been
an exaggeration. They also declared that the mysterious steamer Berosa
was lying at the head of the river, but was a broken-down and worthless
affair, and would never get to sea. The result has since proved this;
for the vessel subsequently ran the blockade and foundered near shore,
the crew barely escaping with their lives. I had the pleasure, as it
happened, of being the first person to forward this information
to Admiral Dupont, when it came through the pickets, many months
after,--thus concluding my report on the Berosa.

Before the work at the yard was over the pickets reported mounted men in
the woods near by, as had previously been the report at Woodstock.
This admonished us to lose no time; and as we left the wharf, immediate
arrangements were made to have the gun crews all in readiness, and to
keep the rest of the men below, since their musketry would be of little
use now, and I did not propose to risk a life unnecessarily. The chief
obstacle to this was their own eagerness; penned down on one side, they
popped up on the other; their officers, too, were eager to see what was
going on, and were almost as hard to cork down as the men. Add to this,
that the vessel was now very crowded, and that I had to be chiefly
on the hurricane-deck with the pilots. Captain Clifton, master of the
vessel, was brave to excess, and as much excited as the men; he could no
more be kept in the little pilot-house than they below; and when we had
passed one or two bluffs, with no sign of an enemy, he grew more and
more irrepressible, and exposed himself conspicuously on the upper deck.
Perhaps we all were a little lulled by apparent safety; for myself, I
lay down for a moment on a settee in a state-room, having been on my
feet, almost without cessation, for twenty-four hours.

Suddenly there swept down from a bluff above us, on the Georgia side, a
mingling of shout and roar and rattle as of a tornado let loose; and
as a storm of bullets came pelting against the sides of the vessel, and
through a window, there went up a shrill answering shout from our own
men. It took but an instant for me to reach the gun-deck. After all my
efforts the men had swarmed once more from below, and already, crowding
at both ends of the boat, were loading and firing with inconceivable
rapidity, shouting to each other, "Nebber gib it up!" and of course
having no steady aim, as the vessel glided and whirled in the swift
current. Meanwhile the officers in charge of the large guns had their
crews in order, and our shells began to fly over the bluffs, which, as
we now saw, should have been shelled in advance, only that we had to
economize ammunition. The other soldiers I drove below, almost by main
force, with the aid of their officers, who behaved exceedingly well,
giving the men leave to fire from the open port-holes which lined
the lower deck, almost at the water's level. In the very midst of the
_melee_ Major Strong came from the upper deck, with a face of horror,
and whispered to me, "Captain Clifton was killed at the first shot by my
side."

If he had said that the vessel was on fire the shock would hardly have
been greater. Of course, the military commander on board a steamer is
almost as helpless as an unarmed man, so far as the risks of water go. A
seaman must command there. In the hazardous voyage of last night, I
had learned, though unjustly, to distrust every official on board the
steamboat except this excitable, brave, warm-hearted sailor; and now,
among these added dangers, to lose him! The responsibility for his life
also thrilled me; he was not among my soldiers, and yet he was killed. I
thought of his wife and children, of whom he had spoken; but one learns
to think rapidly in war, and, cautioning the Major to silence, I went up
to the hurricane-deck and drew in the helpless body, that it should be
safe from further desecration, and then looked to see where we were.

We were now gliding past a safe reach of marsh, while our assailants
were riding by cross-paths to attack us at the next bluff. It was Reed's
Bluff where we were first attacked, and Scrubby Bluff, I think, was
next. They were shelled in advance, but swarmed manfully to the banks
again as we swept round one of the sharp angles of the stream beneath
their fire. My men were now pretty well imprisoned below in the hot and
crowded hold, and actually fought each other, the officers afterwards
said, for places at the open port-holes, from which to aim. Others
implored to be landed, exclaiming that they "supposed de Cunnel knew
best," but it was "mighty mean" to be shut up down below, when they
might be "fightin' de Secesh _in de clar field_." This clear field, and
no favor, was what they thenceforward sighed for. But in such difficult
navigation it would have been madness to think of landing, although one
daring Rebel actually sprang upon the large boat which we towed astern,
where he was shot down by one of our sergeants. This boat was soon after
swamped and abandoned, then taken and repaired by the Rebels at a later
date, and finally, by a piece of dramatic completeness, was seized by
a party of fugitive slaves, who escaped in it to our lines, and some of
whom enlisted in my own regiment.

It has always been rather a mystery to me why the Rebels did not fell
a few trees across the stream at some of the many sharp angles where we
might so easily have been thus imprisoned. This, however, they did
not attempt, and with the skilful pilotage of our trusty
Corporal,--philosophic as Socrates through all the din, and occasionally
relieving his mind by taking a shot with his rifle through the high
portholes of the pilot-house,--we glided safely on. The steamer did not
ground once on the descent, and the mate in command, Mr. Smith, did his
duty very well. The plank sheathing of the pilot-house was penetrated by
few bullets, though struck by so many outside that it was visited as a
curiosity after our return; and even among the gun-crews, though they
had no protection, not a man was hurt. As we approached some wooded
bluff, usually on the Georgia side, we could see galloping along the
hillside what seemed a regiment of mounted riflemen, and could see our
shell scatter them ere we approached. Shelling did not, however, prevent
a rather fierce fusilade from our old friends of Captain dark's company
at Waterman's Bluff, near Township Landing; but even this did no serious
damage, and this was the last.

It was of course impossible, while thus running the gauntlet, to put our
hostages ashore, and I could only explain to them that they must thank
their own friends for their inevitable detention. I was by no means
proud of their forlorn appearance, and besought Colonel Hawley to take
them off my hands; but he was sending no flags of truce at that time,
and liked their looks no better than I did. So I took them to Port
Royal, where they were afterwards sent safely across the lines. Our
men were pleased at taking them back with us, as they had already said,
regretfully, "S'pose we leave dem Secesh at Fernandina, General Saxby
won't see 'em,"--as if they were some new natural curiosity, which
indeed they were. One soldier further suggested the expediency of
keeping them permanently in camp, to be used as marks for the guns of
the relieved guard every morning. But this was rather an ebullition of
fancy than a sober proposition.

Against these levities I must put a piece of more tragic eloquence,
which I took down by night on the steamer's deck from the thrilling
harangue of Corporal Adam Allston, one of our most gifted prophets,
whose influence over the men was unbounded. "When I heard," he said,
"de bombshell a-screamin' troo de woods like de Judgment Day, I said to
myself, 'If my head was took off to-night, dey couldn't put my soul
in de torments, perceps [except] God was my enemy!' And when de
rifle-bullets came whizzin' across de deck, I cried aloud, 'God help my
congregation! Boys, load and fire!'"

I must pass briefly over the few remaining days of our cruise. At
Fernandina we met the Planter, which had been successful on her separate
expedition, and had destroyed extensive salt-works at Crooked River,
under charge of the energetic Captain Trowbridge, efficiently aided by
Captain Rogers. Our commodities being in part delivered at Fernandina,
our decks being full, coal nearly out, and time up, we called once more
at St. Simon's Sound, bringing away the remainder of our railroad-iron,
with some which the naval officers had previously disinterred, and then
steamed back to Beaufort. Arriving there at sunrise (February 2, 1863),
I made my way with Dr. Rogers to General Saxton's bedroom, and laid
before him the keys and shackles of the slave-prison, with my report
of the good conduct of the men,--as Dr. Rogers remarked, a message from
heaven and another from hell.

Slight as this expedition now seems among the vast events of the war,
the future student of the newspapers of that day will find that it
occupied no little space in their columns, so intense was the interest
which then attached to the novel experiment of employing black troops.
So obvious, too, was the value, during this raid, of their local
knowledge and their enthusiasm, that it was impossible not to find in
its successes new suggestions for the war. Certainly I would not have
consented to repeat the enterprise with the bravest white troops,
leaving Corporal Sutton and his mates behind, for I should have expected
to fail. For a year after our raid the Upper St. Mary's remained
unvisited, till in 1864 the large force with which we held Florida
secured peace upon its banks; then Mrs. A. took the oath of allegiance,
the Government bought her remaining lumber, and the John Adams again
ascended with a detachment of my men under Lieutenant Parker, and
brought a portion of it to Fernandina. By a strange turn of fortune,
Corporal Sutton (now Sergeant) was at this time in jail at Hilton Head,
under sentence of court-martial for an alleged act of mutiny,--an affair
in which the general voice of our officers sustained him and condemned
his accusers, so that he soon received a full pardon, and was restored
in honor to his place in the regiment, which he has ever since held.

Nothing can ever exaggerate the fascinations of war, whether on the
largest or smallest scale. When we settled down into camp-life again, it
seemed like a butterfly's folding its wings to re-enter the chrysalis.
None of us could listen to the crack of a gun without recalling
instantly the sharp shots that spilled down from the bluffs of the
St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without
recalling the sounds which startled us on the Field of the Hundred
Pines. The memory of our raid was preserved in the camp by many legends
of adventure, growing vaster and more incredible as time wore on,--and
by the morning appeals to the surgeon of some veteran invalids, who
could now cut off all reproofs and suspicions with "Doctor, I's been
a sickly pusson eber since de _expeditious_." But to me the most vivid
remembrancer was the flock of sheep which we had "lifted." The Post
Quartermaster discreetly gave us the charge of them, and they rilled a
gap in the landscape and in the larder,--which last had before presented
one unvaried round of impenetrable beef. Mr. Obabiah Oldbuck, when he
decided to adopt a pastoral life, and assumed the provisional name of
Thyrsis, never looked upon his flocks and herds with more unalloyed
contentment than I upon that fleecy family. I had been familiar, in
Kansas, with the metaphor by which the sentiments of an owner were
credited to his property, and had heard of a proslavery colt and an
antislavery cow. The fact that these sheep were but recently converted
from "Se-cesh" sentiments was their crowning charm. Methought they
frisked and fattened in the joy of their deliverance from the shadow
of Mrs. A.'s slave-jail, and gladly contemplated translation into
mutton-broth for sick or wounded soldiers. The very slaves who once,
perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock,
had now asserted their humanity, and would devour him as hospital
rations. Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook,
and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,--those sheep-stealers
of less elevated aims,--when I met in my daily rides these wandering
trophies of our wider wanderings.



Chapter 4. Up the St. John's


There was not much stirring in the Department of the South early in
1863, and the St. Mary's expedition had afforded a new sensation. Of
course the few officers of colored troops, and a larger number who
wished to become such, were urgent for further experiments in the same
line; and the Florida tax-commissioners were urgent likewise. I well
remember the morning when, after some preliminary correspondence, I
steamed down from Beaufort, S. C., to Hilton Head, with General Saxton,
Judge S., and one or two others, to have an interview on the matter with
Major-General Hunter, then commanding the Department.

Hilton Head, in those days, seemed always like some foreign military
station in the tropics. The long, low, white buildings, with piazzas
and verandas on the water-side; the general impression of heat and
lassitude, existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea-breeze; the
sandy, almost impassable streets; and the firm, level beach, on which
everybody walked who could get there: all these suggested Jamaica or the
East Indies. Then the head-quarters at the end of the beach, the Zouave
sentinels, the successive anterooms, the lounging aids, the good-natured
and easy General,--easy by habit and energetic by impulse,--all had a
certain air of Southern languor, rather picturesque, but perhaps not
altogether bracing. General Hunter received us, that day, with his usual
kindliness; there was a good deal of pleasant chat; Miles O'Reilly was
called in to read his latest verses; and then we came to the matter in
hand.

Jacksonville, on the St. John's River, in Florida, had been
already twice taken and twice evacuated; having been occupied by
Brigadier-General Wright, in March, 1862, and by Brigadier-General
Brannan, in October of the same year. The second evacuation was by
Major-General Hunter's own order, on the avowed ground that a garrison
of five thousand was needed to hold the place, and that this force could
not be spared. The present proposition was to take and hold it with
a brigade of less than a thousand men, carrying, however, arms and
uniforms for twice that number, and a month's rations. The claim was,
that there were fewer rebel troops in the Department than formerly,
and that the St. Mary's expedition had shown the advantage possessed by
colored troops, in local knowledge, and in the confidence of the loyal
blacks. It was also urged, that it was worth while to risk something, in
the effort to hold Florida, and perhaps bring it back into the Union.

My chief aim in the negotiation was to get the men into action, and
that of the Florida Commissioners to get them into Florida. Thus far
coinciding, we could heartily co-operate; and though General Hunter made
some reasonable objections, they were yielded more readily than I had
feared; and finally, before half our logical ammunition was exhausted,
the desired permission was given, and the thing might be considered as
done.

We were now to leave, as we supposed forever, the camp which had thus
far been our home. Our vast amount of surplus baggage made a heavy job
in the loading, inasmuch as we had no wharf, and everything had to be
put on board by means of flat-boats. It was completed by twenty-four
hours of steady work; and after some of the usual uncomfortable delays
which wait on military expeditions, we were at last afloat.

I had tried to keep the plan as secret as possible, and had requested
to have no definite orders, until we should be on board ship. But this
larger expedition was less within my own hands than was the St. Mary's
affair, and the great reliance for concealment was on certain counter
reports, ingeniously set afloat by some of the Florida men. These
reports rapidly swelled into the most enormous tales, and by the time
they reached the New York newspapers, the expedition was "a great
volcano about bursting, whose lava will burn, flow, and destroy," "the
sudden appearance in arms of no less than five thousand negroes,"
"a liberating host," "not the phantom, but the reality, of servile
insurrection." What the undertaking actually was may be best seen in the
instructions which guided it.*

* HEAD-QUARTERS, BEAUFORT, S. C.,

March 5, 1863.

COLONEL,--You will please proceed with your command, the First and
Second Regiments South Carolina Volunteers, which are now embarked upon
the steamers John Adams, Boston, and Burn-side, to Fernandina, Florida.

Relying upon your military skill and judgment. I shall give you no
special directions as to your procedure after you leave Fernandina.
I expect, however, that you will occupy Jacksonville, Florida, and
intrench yourselves there.

The main objects of your expedition are to carry the proclamation of
freedom to the enslaved; to call all loyal men into the service of the
United States; to occupy as much of the State of Florida as possible
with the forces under your command; and to neglect no means consistent
with the usages of civilized warfare to weaken, harass, and annoy those
who are in rebellion against the Government of the United States.

Trusting that the blessing of our Heavenly Father will rest upon your
noble enterprise,

I am yours, sincerely,

R. SAXTON,

Brig.-Gen., Mil. Gov. Dept. of the South. Colonel Higginson, Comdg.
Expeditionary Corps.


In due time, after touching at Fernandina, we reached the difficult
bar of the St. John's, and were piloted safely over. Admiral Dupont had
furnished a courteous letter of introduction.* and we were cordially
received by Commander Duncan of the Norwich, and Lieutenant Watson,
commanding the Uncas. Like all officers on blockade duty, they were
impatient of their enforced inaction, and gladly seized the opportunity
for a different service. It was some time since they had ascended as
high as Jacksonville, for their orders were strict, one vessel's coal
was low, the other was in infirm condition, and there were rumors of
cotton-clads and torpedoes. But they gladly agreed to escort us up
the river, so soon as our own armed gunboat, the John Adams, should
arrive,--she being unaccountably delayed.

FLAG SHIP WABASH,

PORT ROYAL HARBOR, S. C., March 6, 1863. SIR,--I am informed by
Major-General Hunter that he is sending Colonel Higginson on an
important mission in the southerly part of his Department.

I have not been made acquainted with the objects of this mission, but
any assistance that you can offer Colonel Higginson, which will not
interfere with your other duties, you are authorized to give.

Respectfully your obedient servant,

S. F. DUPONT, Rear-Adm. Comdg. S. Atl. Block. Squad.

To the Senior Officer at the different Blockading Stations on the Coast
of Georgia and Florida.


We waited twenty-four hours for her, at the sultry mouth of that glassy
river, watching the great pelicans which floated lazily on its tide, or
sometimes shooting one, to admire the great pouch, into which one of
the soldiers could insert his foot, as into a boot. "He hold one quart,"
said the admiring experimentalist. "Hi! boy," retorted another quickly,
"neber you bring dat quart measure in _my_ peck o' corn." The protest
came very promptly, and was certainly fair; for the strange receptacle
would have held nearly a gallon.

We went on shore, too, and were shown a rather pathetic little garden,
which the naval officers had laid out, indulging a dream of vegetables.
They lingered over the little microscopic sprouts, pointing them out
tenderly, as if they were cradled babies. I have often noticed this
touching weakness, in gentlemen of that profession, on lonely stations.

We wandered among the bluffs, too, in the little deserted hamlet called
"Pilot Town." The ever-shifting sand had in some cases almost buried
the small houses, and had swept around others a circular drift, at a few
yards' distance, overtopping then: eaves, and leaving each the untouched
citadel of this natural redoubt. There was also a dismantled lighthouse,
an object which always seems the most dreary symbol of the barbarism
of war, when one considers the national beneficence which reared and
kindled it. Despite the service rendered by this once brilliant light,
there were many wrecks which had been strown upon the beach, victims of
the most formidable of the Southern river-bars. As I stood with my foot
on the half-buried ribs of one of these vessels,--so distinctly traced
that one might almost fancy them human,--the old pilot, my companion,
told me the story of the wreck. The vessel had formerly been in the
Cuba trade; and her owner, an American merchant residing in Havana,
had christened her for his young daughter. I asked the name, and was
startled to recognize that of a favorite young cousin of mine, besides
the bones of whose representative I was thus strangely standing, upon
this lonely shore.

It was well to have something to relieve the anxiety naturally felt at
the delay of the John Adams,--anxiety both for her safety and for the
success of our enterprise, The Rebels had repeatedly threatened to
burn the whole of Jacksonville, in case of another attack, as they had
previously burned its mills and its great hotel. It seemed as if the
news of our arrival must surely have travelled thirty miles by this
time. All day we watched every smoke that rose among the wooded hills,
and consulted the compass and the map, to see if that sign announced the
doom of our expected home. At the very last moment of the tide, just
in time to cross the bar that day, the missing vessel arrived; all
anxieties vanished; I transferred my quarters on board, and at two the
next morning we steamed up the river.

Again there was the dreamy delight of ascending an unknown stream,
beneath a sinking moon, into a region where peril made fascination.
Since the time of the first explorers, I suppose that those Southern
waters have known no sensations so dreamy and so bewitching as those
which this war has brought forth. I recall, in this case, the faintest
sensations of our voyage, as Ponce de Leon may have recalled those
of his wandering search, in the same soft zone, for the secret of the
mystic fountain. I remember how, during that night, I looked for the
first time through a powerful night-glass. It had always seemed a thing
wholly inconceivable, that a mere lens could change darkness into light;
and as I turned the instrument on the preceding gunboat, and actually
discerned the man at the wheel and the others standing about him,--all
relapsing into vague gloom again at the withdrawal of the glass,--it
gave a feeling of childish delight. Yet it seemed only in keeping
with the whole enchantment of the scene; and had I been some Aladdin,
convoyed by genii or giants, I could hardly have felt more wholly a
denizen of some world of romance.

But the river was of difficult navigation; and we began to feel
sometimes, beneath the keel, that ominous, sliding, grating, treacherous
arrest of motion which makes the heart shudder, as the vessel does.
There was some solicitude about torpedoes, also,--a peril which became
a formidable thing, one year later, in the very channel where we found
none. Soon one of our consorts grounded, then another, every vessel
taking its turn, I believe, and then in turn getting off, until the
Norwich lay hopelessly stranded, for that tide at least, a few miles
below Jacksonville, and out of sight of the city, so that she could not
even add to our dignity by her visible presence from afar.

This was rather a serious matter, as the Norwich was our main naval
reliance, the Uncas being a small steamer of less than two hundred tons,
and in such poor condition that Commander Duncan, on finding himself
aground, at first quite declined to trust his consort any farther alone.
But, having got thus far, it was plainly my duty to risk the remainder
with or without naval assistance; and this being so, the courageous
officer did not long object, but allowed his dashing subordinate to
steam up with us to the city. This left us one naval and one army
gunboat; and, fortunately, the Burn-side, being a black propeller,
always passed for an armed vessel among the Rebels, and we rather
encouraged that pleasing illusion.

We had aimed to reach Jacksonville at daybreak; but these mishaps
delayed us, and we had several hours of fresh, early sunshine, lighting
up the green shores of that lovely river, wooded to the water's edge,
with sometimes an emerald meadow, opening a vista to some picturesque
house,--all utterly unlike anything we had yet seen in the South, and
suggesting rather the Penobscot or Kennebec. Here and there we glided
by the ruins of some saw-mill burned by the Rebels on General Wright's
approach; but nothing else spoke of war, except, perhaps, the silence.
It was a delicious day, and a scene of fascination. Our Florida men were
wild with delight; and when we rounded the point below the city, and saw
from afar its long streets, its brick warehouses, its white cottages,
and its overshadowing trees,--all peaceful and undisturbed by
flames,--it seemed, in the men's favorite phrase, "too much good," and
all discipline was merged, for the moment, in a buzz of ecstasy.

The city was still there for us, at any rate; though none knew what
perils might be concealed behind those quiet buildings. Yet there were
children playing on the wharves; careless men, here and there, lounged
down to look at us, hands in pockets; a few women came to their doors,
and gazed listlessly upon us, shading their eyes with their hands. We
drew momently nearer, in silence and with breathless attention. The
gunners were at their posts, and the men in line. It was eight o'clock.
We were now directly opposite the town: yet no sign of danger was seen;
not a rifle-shot was heard; not a shell rose hissing in the air.
The Uncas rounded to, and dropped anchor in the stream; by previous
agreement, I steamed to an upper pier of the town, Colonel Montgomery
to a lower one; the little boat-howitzers were run out upon the wharves,
and presently to the angles of the chief streets; and the pretty town
was our own without a shot. In spite of our detention, the surprise had
been complete, and not a soul in Jacksonville had dreamed of our coming.

The day passed quickly, in eager preparations for defence; the people
could or would give us no definite information about the Rebel camp,
which was, however, known to be near, and our force did not permit our
going out to surprise it. The night following was the most anxious I
ever spent. We were all tired out; the companies were under arms, in
various parts of the town, to be ready for an attack at any moment. My
temporary quarters were beneath the loveliest grove of linden-trees,
and as I reclined, half-dozing, the mocking-birds sang all night like
nightingales,--their notes seeming to trickle down through the sweet air
from amid the blossoming boughs. Day brought relief and the sense of due
possession, and we could see what we had won.

Jacksonville was now a United States post again: the only post on the
main-land in the Department of the South. Before the war it had three or
four thousand inhabitants, and a rapidly growing lumber-trade, for which
abundant facilities were evidently provided. The wharves were capacious,
and the blocks of brick warehouses along the lower street were utterly
unlike anything we had yet seen in that region, as were the neatness and
thrift everywhere visible. It had been built up by Northern enterprise,
and much of the property was owned by loyal men. It had been a great
resort for invalids, though the Rebels had burned the large hotel
which once accommodated them. Mills had also been burned; but the
dwelling-houses were almost all in good condition. The quarters for the
men were admirable; and I took official possession of the handsome brick
house of Colonel Sunder-land, the established head-quarters through
every occupation, whose accommodating flag-staff had literally and
repeatedly changed its colors. The seceded Colonel, reputed author of
the State ordinance of Secession, was a New-Yorker by birth, and we
found his law-card, issued when in practice in Easton, Washington
County, New York. He certainly had good taste in planning the inside of
a house, though time had impaired its condition. There was a neat office
with ample bookcases and no books, a billiard-table with no balls,
gas-fixtures without gas, and a bathing-room without water. There was
a separate building for servants' quarters, and a kitchen with every
convenience, even to a few jars of lingering pickles. On the whole,
there was an air of substance and comfort about the town, quite alien
from the picturesque decadence of Beaufort.

The town rose gradually from the river, and was bounded on the rear by a
long, sluggish creek, beyond which lay a stretch of woods, affording an
excellent covert for the enemy, but without great facilities for attack,
as there were but two or three fords and bridges. This brook could
easily be held against a small force, but could at any time and at
almost any point be readily crossed by a large one. North of the town
the land rose a little, between the river and the sources of the brook,
and then sank to a plain, which had been partially cleared by a previous
garrison. For so small a force as ours, however, this clearing must be
extended nearer to the town; otherwise our lines would be too long for
our numbers.

This deficiency in numbers at once became a source of serious anxiety.
While planning the expedition, it had seemed so important to get the men
a foothold in Florida that I was willing to risk everything for it.
But this important post once in our possession, it began to show
some analogies to the proverbial elephant in the lottery. To hold it
permanently with nine hundred men was not, perhaps, impossible, with the
aid of a gunboat (I had left many of my own regiment sick and on duty
in Beaufort, and Colonel Montgomery had as yet less than one hundred and
fifty); but to hold it, and also to make forays up the river, certainly
required a larger number. We came in part to recruit, but had found
scarcely an able-bodied negro in the city; all had been removed farther
up, and we must certainly contrive to follow them. I was very unwilling
to have, as yet, any white troops under my command, with the blacks.
Finally, however, being informed by Judge S. of a conversation with
Colonel Hawley, commanding at Fernandina, in which the latter had
offered to send four companies and a light battery to swell our
force,--in view of the aid given to his position by this more advanced
post, I decided to authorize the energetic Judge to go back to
Fernandina and renew the negotiation, as the John Adams must go thither
at any rate for coal.

Meanwhile all definite display of our force was avoided; dress-parades
were omitted; the companies were so distributed as to tell for the
utmost; and judicious use was made, here and there, of empty tents. The
gunboats and transports moved impressively up and down the river,
from time to time. The disposition of pickets was varied each night to
perplex the enemy, and some advantage taken of his distrust, which might
be assumed as equalling our own. The citizens were duly impressed by our
supply of ammunition, which was really enormous, and all these things
soon took effect. A loyal woman, who came into town, said that the Rebel
scouts, stopping at her house, reported that there were "sixteen hundred
negroes all over the woods, and the town full of them besides." "It was
of no use to go in. General Finnegan had driven them into a bad place
once, and should not do it again." "They had lost their captain and
their best surgeon in the first skirmish, and if the Savannah people
wanted the negroes driven away, they might come and do it themselves."
Unfortunately, we knew that they could easily come from Savannah at any
time, as there was railroad communication nearly all the way; and
every time we heard the steam-whistle, the men were convinced of their
arrival. Thus we never could approach to any certainty as to their
numbers, while they could observe, from the bluffs, every steamboat that
ascended the river.

To render our weak force still more available, we barricaded the
approaches to the chief streets by constructing barriers or felling
trees. It went to my heart to sacrifice, for this purpose, several of my
beautiful lindens; but it was no time for aesthetics. As the giants lay
on the ground, still scenting the air with their abundant bloom, I used
to rein up my horse and watch the children playing hide-and-seek amongst
their branches, or some quiet cow grazing at the foliage. Nothing
impresses the mind in war like some occasional object or association
that belongs apparently to peace alone.

Among all these solicitudes, it was a great thing that one particular
anxiety vanished in a day. On the former expedition the men were upon
trial as to their courage; now they were to endure another test, as to
their demeanor as victors. Here were five hundred citizens, nearly all
white, at the mercy of their former slaves. To some of these whites it
was the last crowning humiliation, and they were, or professed to be,
in perpetual fear. On the other hand, the most intelligent and lady-like
woman I saw, the wife of a Rebel captain, rather surprised me by saying
that it seemed pleasanter to have these men stationed there, whom they
had known all their lives, and who had generally borne a good character,
than to be in the power of entire strangers. Certainly the men deserved
the confidence, for there was scarcely an exception to their good
behavior. I think they thoroughly felt that their honor and dignity were
concerned in the matter, and took too much pride in their character
as soldiers,--to say nothing of higher motives,--to tarnish it by any
misdeeds. They watched their officers vigilantly and even suspiciously,
to detect any disposition towards compromise; and so long as we pursued
a just course it was evident that they could be relied on. Yet the
spot was pointed out to me where two of our leading men had seen their
brothers hanged by Lynch law; many of them had private wrongs to avenge;
and they all had utter disbelief in all pretended loyalty, especially on
the part of the women.

One citizen alone was brought to me in a sort of escort of honor by
Corporal Prince Lambkin,--one of the color-guard, and one of our ablest
men,--the same who had once made a speech in camp, reminding his hearers
that they had lived under the American flag for eighteen hundred and
sixty-two years, and ought to live and die under it. Corporal Lambkin
now introduced his man, a German, with the highest compliment in his
power, "He hab true colored-man heart." Surrounded by mean, cajoling,
insinuating white men and women who were all that and worse, I was quite
ready to appreciate the quality he thus proclaimed. A colored-man heart,
in the Rebel States, is a fair synonyme for a loyal heart, and it is
about the only such synonyme. In this case, I found afterwards that the
man in question, a small grocer, had been an object of suspicion to the
whites from his readiness to lend money to the negroes, or sell to
them on credit; in which, perhaps, there may have been some mixture of
self-interest with benevolence.

I resort to a note-book of that period, well thumbed and pocket-worn,
which sometimes received a fragment of the day's experience.


"March 16, 1863.

"Of course, droll things are constantly occurring. Every white
man, woman, and child is flattering, seductive, and professes Union
sentiment; every black ditto believes that every white ditto is a
scoundrel, and ought to be shot, but for good order and military
discipline. The Provost Marshal and I steer between them as blandly as
we can. Such scenes as succeed each other! Rush of indignant Africans.
A white man, in woman's clothes, has been seen to enter a certain
house,--undoubtedly a spy. Further evidence discloses the Roman
Catholic priest, a peaceful little Frenchman, in his professional
apparel.--Anxious female enters. Some sentinel has shot her cow by
mistake for a Rebel. The United States cannot think of paying the
desired thirty dollars. Let her go to the Post-Quartermaster and select
a cow from his herd. If there is none to suit her (and, indeed, not one
of them gave a drop of milk,--neither did hers), let her wait till
the next lot comes in,--that is all.--Yesterday's operations gave the
following total yield: Thirty 'contrabands,' eighteen horses, eleven
cattle, ten saddles and bridles, and one new army-wagon. At this rate we
shall soon be self-supporting _cavalry_.

"Where complaints are made of the soldiers, it almost always turns out
that the women have insulted them most grossly, swearing at them, and
the like. One unpleasant old Dutch woman came in, bursting with wrath,
and told the whole narrative of her blameless life, diversified with
sobs:--

"'Last January I ran off two of my black people from St. Mary's to
Fernandina,' (sob,)--'then I moved down there myself, and at Lake City I
lost six women and a boy,' (sob,)--'then I stopped at Baldwin for one
of the wenches to be confined,' (sob,)--'then I brought them all here
to live in a Christian country' (sob, sob). "Then the blockheads'
[blockades, that is, gunboats] 'came, and they all ran off with the
blockheads,' (sob, sob, sob,) 'and left me, an old lady of forty-six,
obliged to work for a living.' (Chaos of sobs, without cessation.)

"But when I found what the old sinner had said to the soldiers I rather
wondered at their self-control in not throttling her."

Meanwhile skirmishing went on daily in the outskirts of the town.
There was a fight on the very first day, when our men killed, as before
hinted, a Rebel surgeon, which was oddly metamorphosed in the Southern
newspapers into their killing one of ours, which certainly never
happened. Every day, after this, they appeared in small mounted squads
in the neighborhood, and exchanged shots with our pickets, to which the
gunboats would contribute their louder share, their aim being rather
embarrassed by the woods and hills. We made reconnoissances, too, to
learn the country in different directions, and were apt to be fired upon
during these. Along the farther side of what we called the "Debatable
Land" there was a line of cottages, hardly superior to negro huts,
and almost all empty, where the Rebel pickets resorted, and from whose
windows they fired. By degrees all these nests were broken up and
destroyed, though it cost some trouble to do it, and the hottest
skirmishing usually took place around them.

Among these little affairs was one which we called "Company K's
Skirmish," because it brought out the fact that this company, which was
composed entirely of South Carolina men, and had never shone in drill
or discipline, stood near the head of the regiment for coolness and
courage,--the defect of discipline showing itself only in their extreme
unwillingness to halt when once let loose. It was at this time that the
small comedy of the Goose occurred,--an anecdote which Wendell Phillips
has since made his own.

One of the advancing line of skirmishers, usually an active fellow
enough, was observed to move clumsily and irregularly. It soon appeared
that he had encountered a fine specimen of the domestic goose, which had
surrendered at discretion. Not wishing to lose it, he could yet find no
way to hold it but between his legs; and so he went on, loading, firing,
advancing, halting, always with the goose writhing and struggling and
hissing in this natural pair of stocks. Both happily came off unwounded,
and retired in good order at the signal, or some time after it; but I
have hardly a cooler thing to put on record.

Meanwhile, another fellow left the field less exultingly; for, after a
thoroughly courageous share in the skirmish, he came blubbering to his
captain, and said,--"Cappen, make Caesar gib me my cane." It seemed
that, during some interval of the fighting, he had helped himself to an
armful of Rebel sugar-cane, such as they all delighted in chewing. The
Roman hero, during another pause, had confiscated the treasure; whence
these tears of the returning warrior. I never could accustom myself to
these extraordinary interminglings of manly and childish attributes.

Our most untiring scout during this period was the chaplain of my
regiment,--the most restless and daring spirit we had, and now exulting
in full liberty of action. He it was who was daily permitted to
stray singly where no other officer would have been allowed to go, so
irresistible was his appeal, "You know I am only a chaplain." Methinks I
see our regimental saint, with pistols in belt and a Ballard rifle slung
on shoulder, putting spurs to his steed, and cantering away down some
questionable wood-path, or returning with some tale of Rebel haunt
discovered, or store of foraging. He would track an enemy like an
Indian, or exhort him, when apprehended, like an early Christian. Some
of our devout soldiers shook their heads sometimes over the chaplain's
little eccentricities. "Woffor Mr. Chapman made a preacher for?" said
one of them, as usual transforming his title into a patronymic. "He's
_de fightingest more Yankee_ I eber see in all my days."

And the criticism was very natural, though they could not deny that,
when the hour for Sunday service came, Mr. F. commanded the respect and
attention of all. That hour never came, however, on our first Sunday
in Jacksonville; we were too busy and the men too scattered; so the
chaplain made his accustomed foray beyond the lines instead.

"Is it not Sunday?" slyly asked an unregenerate lieutenant. "Nay," quoth
his Reverence, waxing fervid; "it is the Day of Judgment"

This reminds me of a raid up the river, conducted by one of our senior
captains, an enthusiast whose gray beard and prophetic manner always
took me back to the Fifth-Monarchy men. He was most successful that day,
bringing back horses, cattle, provisions, and prisoners; and one of the
latter complained bitterly to me of being held, stating that Captain R.
had promised him speedy liberty. But that doughty official spurned
the imputation of such weak blandishments, in this day of triumphant
retribution.

"Promise him!" said he, "I promised him nothing but the Day of Judgment
and Periods of Damnation!"

Often since have I rolled beneath my tongue this savory and solemn
sentence, and I do not believe that since the days of the Long
Parliament there has been a more resounding anathema.

In Colonel Montgomery's hands these up-river raids reached the dignity
of a fine art. His conceptions of foraging were rather more Western and
liberal than mine, and on these excursions he fully indemnified himself
for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp. I remember being
on the wharf, with some naval officers, when he came down from his first
trip. The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from
the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from
the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck's wings were
seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck trousers. The
naval heroes, mindful of their own short rations, and taking high views
of one's duties in a conquered country, looked at me reproachfully,
as who should say, "Shall these things be?" In a moment or two the
returning foragers had landed.

"Captain ----," said Montgomery, courteously, "would you allow me to
send a remarkably fine turkey for your use on board ship?"

"Lieutenant ----," said Major Corwin, "may I ask your acceptance of a
pair of ducks for your mess?"

Never did I behold more cordial relations between army and navy than
sprang into existence at those sentences. So true it is, as Charles
Lamb says, that a single present of game may diffuse kindly sentiments
through a whole community. These little trips were called "rest"; there
was no other rest during those ten days. An immense amount of picket and
fatigue duty had to be done. Two redoubts were to be built to command
the Northern Valley; all the intervening grove, which now afforded
lurking-ground for a daring enemy, must be cleared away; and a few
houses must be reluctantly razed for the same purpose. The fort on the
left was named Fort Higginson, and that built by my own regiment, in
return, Fort Montgomery. The former was necessarily a hasty work, and
is now, I believe, in ruins; the latter was far more elaborately
constructed, on lines well traced by the Fourth New Hampshire during the
previous occupation. It did great credit to Captain Trowbridge, of my
regiment (formerly of the New York Volunteer Engineers), who had charge
of its construction.

How like a dream seems now that period of daily skirmishes and nightly
watchfulness! The fatigue was so constant that the days hurried by.
I felt the need of some occasional change of ideas, and having just
received from the North Mr. Brook's beautiful translation of Jean Paul's
"Titan," I used to retire to my bedroom for some ten minutes every
afternoon, and read a chapter or two. It was more refreshing than a nap,
and will always be to me one of the most f

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/6764