*COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, Executive Department,

Boston, February 5, 1863.

To COL. T. W. HIGGINSON, Commanding 1st Regt. S. C. Vols.,

Port Royal Id., S. C.

COLONEL,—I am under obligations to you for your very interesting letter of January 19th, which I considered to be too important in its testimony to the efficiency of colored troops to be allowed to remain hidden on my files. I therefore placed some portions of it in the hands of Hon. Stephen M. Weld, of Jamaica Plain, for publication, and you will find enclosed the newspaper slip from the "Journal" of February 3d, in which it appeared. During a recent visit at Washington I have obtained permission from the Department of War to enlist colored troops as part of the Massachusetts quota, and I am about to begin to organize a colored infantry regiment, to be numbered the "54th Massachusetts Volunteers."

I shall be greatly obliged by any suggestions which your experience may afford concerning it, and I am determined that it shall serve as a model, in the high character of its officers and the thorough discipline of its men, for all subsequent corps of the like material.

Please present to General Saxton the assurances of my respectful regard.

I have the honor to be, respectfully and obediently yours,

JOHN A. ANDREW, Governor of Massachusetts.

In the streets of Beaufort I had met Colonel Shaw, riding with his lieutenant-colonel and successor, Edward Hallowell, and had gone back with them to share their first meal in camp. I should have known Shaw anywhere by his resemblance to his kindred, nor did it take long to perceive that he shared their habitual truthfulness and courage. Moreover, he and Hallowell had already got beyond the commonplaces of inexperience, in regard to colored troops, and, for a wonder, asked only sensible questions. For instance, he admitted the mere matter of courage to be settled, as regarded the colored troops, and his whole solicitude bore on this point, Would they do as well in line-of-battle as they had already done in more irregular service, and on picket and guard duty? Of this I had, of course, no doubt, nor, I think, had he; though I remember his saying something about the possibility of putting them between two fires in case of need, and so cutting off their retreat. I should never have thought of such a project, but I could not have expected bun to trust them as I did, until he had been actually under fire with them. That, doubtless, removed all his anxieties, if he really had any.

This interview had occurred on the 4th of June. Shaw and his regiment had very soon been ordered to Georgia, then to Morris Island; Fort Wagner had been assaulted, and he had been killed. Most of the men knew about the circumstances of his death, and many of them had subscribed towards a monument for him,—a project which originated with General Saxton, and which was finally embodied in the "Shaw School-house" at Charleston. So it gave us all pleasure to name this camp for him, as its predecessor had been named for General Saxton.

The new camp was soon brought into good order. The men had great ingenuity in building screens and shelters of light poles, filled in with the gray moss from the live-oaks. The officers had vestibules built in this way, before all their tents; the cooking-places were walled round in the same fashion; and some of the wide company-streets had sheltered sidewalks down the whole line of tents. The sergeant on duty at the entrance of the camp had a similar bower, and the architecture culminated in a "Praise-House" for school and prayer-meetings, some thirty feet in diameter. As for chimneys and flooring, they were provided with that magic and invisible facility which marks the second year of a regiment's life.

That officer is happy who, besides a constitutional love of adventure, has also a love for the details of camp life, and likes to bring them to perfection. Nothing but a hen with her chickens about her can symbolize the content I felt on getting my scattered companies together, after some temporary separation on picket or fatigue duty. Then we went to work upon the nest. The only way to keep a camp in order is to set about everything as if you expected to stay there forever; if you stay, you get the comfort of it; if ordered away in twenty-four hours, you forget all wasted labor in the excitement of departure. Thus viewed, a camp is a sort of model farm or bit of landscape gardening; there is always some small improvement to be made, a trench, a well, more shade against the sun, an increased vigilance in sweeping. Then it is pleasant to take care of the men, to see them happy, to hear them purr.

Then the duties of inspection and drill, suspended during active service, resume their importance with a month or two of quiet. It really costs unceasing labor to keep a regiment in perfect condition and ready for service. The work is made up of minute and endless details, like a bird's pruning her feathers or a cat's licking her kittens into their proper toilet. Here are eight hundred men, every one of whom, every Sunday morning at farthest, must be perfectly soigne in all personal proprieties; he must exhibit himself provided with every article of clothing, buttons, shoe-strings, hooks and eyes, company letter, regimental number, rifle, bayonet, bayonet-scabbard, cap-pouch, cartridge-box, cartridge-box belt, cartridge-box belt-plate, gun-sling, canteen, haversack, knapsack, packed according to rule, forty cartridges, forty percussion caps; and every one of these articles polished to the highest brightness or blackness as the case may be, and moreover hung or slung or tied or carried in precisely the correct manner.

What a vast and formidable housekeeping is here, my patriotic sisters! Consider, too, that every corner of the camp is to be kept absolutely clean and ready for exhibition at the shortest notice; hospital, stables, guard-house, cook-houses, company tents, must all be brought to perfection, and every square inch of this "farm of four acres" must look as smooth as an English lawn, twice a day. All this, beside the discipline and the drill and the regimental and company books, which must keep rigid account of all these details; consider all this, and then wonder no more that officers and men rejoice in being ordered on active service, where a few strokes of the pen will dispose of all this multiplicity of trappings as "expended in action" or "lost in service."

For one, the longer I remained in service, the better I appreciated the good sense of most of the regular army niceties. True, these things must all vanish when the time of action comes, but it is these things that have prepared you for action. Of course, if you dwell on them only, military life becomes millinery life alone. Kinglake says that the Russian Grand-Duke Constantine, contemplating his beautiful toy-regiments, said that he dreaded war, for he knew that it would spoil the troops. The simple fact is, that a soldier is like the weapon he carries; service implies soiling, but you must have it clean in advance, that when soiled it may be of some use.

The men had that year a Christmas present which they enjoyed to the utmost,—furnishing the detail, every other day, for provost-guard duty in Beaufort. It was the only military service which they had ever shared within the town, and it moreover gave a sense of self-respect to be keeping the peace of their own streets. I enjoyed seeing them put on duty those mornings; there was such a twinkle of delight in their eyes, though their features were immovable. As the "reliefs" went round, posting the guard, under charge of a corporal, one could watch the black sentinels successively dropped and the whites picked up,—gradually changing the complexion, like Lord Somebody's black stockings which became white stockings,—till at last there was only a squad of white soldiers obeying the "Support Arms! Forward, March!" of a black corporal.

Then, when once posted, they glorified their office, you may be sure. Discipline had grown rather free-and-easy in the town about that time, and it is said that the guard-house never was so full within human memory as after their first tour of duty. I remember hearing that one young reprobate, son of a leading Northern philanthropist in those parts, was much aggrieved at being taken to the lock-up merely because he was found drunk in the streets. "Why," said he, "the white corporals always showed me the way home." And I can testify that, after an evening party, some weeks later, I beard with pleasure the officers asking eagerly for the countersign. "Who has the countersign?" said they. "The darkeys are on guard to-night, and we must look out for our lives." Even after a Christmas party at General Saxton's, the guard at the door very properly refused to let the ambulance be brought round from the stable for the ladies because the driver had not the countersign.

One of the sergeants of the guard, on one of these occasions, made to one who questioned his authority an answer that could hardly have been improved. The questioner had just been arrested for some offence.

"Know what dat mean?" said the indignant sergeant, pointing to the chevrons on his own sleeve. "Dat mean Guv'ment." Volumes could not have said more, and the victim collapsed. The thing soon settled itself, and nobody remembered to notice whether the face beside the musket of a sentinel were white or black. It meant Government, all the same.

The men were also indulged with several raids on the mainland, under the direction of Captain J. E. Bryant, of the Eighth Maine, the most experienced scout in that region, who was endeavoring to raise by enlistment a regiment of colored troops. On one occasion Captains Whitney and Heasley, with their companies, penetrated nearly to Pocataligo, capturing some pickets and bringing away all the slaves of a plantation,—the latter operation being entirely under the charge of Sergeant Harry Williams (Co. K), without the presence of any white man. The whole command was attacked on the return by a rebel force, which turned out to be what was called in those regions a "dog-company," consisting of mounted riflemen with half a dozen trained bloodhounds. The men met these dogs with their bayonets, killed four or five of their old tormentors with great relish, and brought away the carcass of one. I had the creature skinned, and sent the skin to New York to be stuffed and mounted, meaning to exhibit it at the Sanitary Commission Fair hi Boston; but it spoiled on the passage. These quadruped allies were not originally intended as "dogs of war," but simply to detect fugitive slaves, and the men were delighted at this confirmation of their tales of dog-companies, which some of the officers had always disbelieved.

Captain Bryant, during his scouting adventures, had learned to outwit these bloodhounds, and used his skill in eluding escape, during another expedition of the same kind. He was sent with Captain Metcalf's company far up the Combahee River to cut the telegraphic wires and intercept despatches. Our adventurous chaplain and a telegraphic operator went with the party. They ascended the river, cut the wires, and read the despatches for an hour or two. Unfortunately, the attached wire was too conspicuously hung, and was seen by a passenger on the railway train in passing. The train was stopped and a swift stampede followed; a squad of cavalry was sent in pursuit, and our chaplain, with Lieutenant Osborn, of Bryant's projected regiment, were captured; also one private,—the first of our men who had ever been taken prisoners. In spite of an agreement at Washington to the contrary, our chaplain was held as prisoner of war, the only spiritual adviser in uniform, so far as I know, who had that honor. I do not know but his reverence would have agreed with Scott's pirate-lieutenant, that it was better to live as plain Jack Bunce than die as Frederick Altamont; but I am very sure that he would rather have been kept prisoner to the close of the war, as a combatant, than have been released on parole as a non-resistant.

After his return, I remember, he gave the most animated accounts of the whole adventure, of which he had enjoyed every instant, from the first entrance on the enemy's soil to the final capture. I suppose we should all like to tap the telegraphic wires anywhere and read our neighbor's messages, if we could only throw round this process the dignity of a Sacred Cause. This was what our good chaplain had done, with the same conscientious zest with which he had conducted his Sunday foraging in Florida. But he told me that nothing so impressed him on the whole trip as the sudden transformation in the black soldier who was taken prisoner with him. The chaplain at once adopted the policy, natural to him, of talking boldly and even defiantly to his captors, and commanding instead of beseeching. He pursued the same policy always and gained by it, he thought. But the negro adopted the diametrically opposite policy, also congenial to his crushed race,—all the force seemed to go out of him, and he surrendered himself like a tortoise to be kicked and trodden upon at their will. This manly, well-trained soldier at once became a slave again, asked no questions, and, if any were asked, made meek and conciliatory answers. He did not know, nor did any of us know, whether he would be treated as a prisoner of war, or shot, or sent to a rice-plantation. He simply acted according to the traditions of his race, as did the chaplain on his side. In the end the soldier's cunning was vindicated by the result; he escaped, and rejoined us in six months, while the chaplain was imprisoned for a year.

The men came back very much exhausted from this expedition, and those who were in the chaplain's squad narrowly escaped with their lives. One brave fellow had actually not a morsel to eat for four days, and then could keep nothing on his stomach for two days more, so that his life was despaired of; and yet he brought all his equipments safe into camp. Some of these men had led such wandering lives, in woods and swamps, that to hunt them was like hunting an otter; shyness and concealment had grown to be their second nature.

After these little episodes came two months of peace. We were clean, comfortable, quiet, and consequently discontented. It was therefore with eagerness that we listened to a rumor of a new Florida expedition, in which we might possibly take a hand.



Chapter 11. Florida Again?

Let me revert once more to my diary, for a specimen of the sharp changes and sudden disappointments that may come to troops in service. But for a case or two of varioloid in the regiment, we should have taken part in the battle of Olustee, and should have had (as was reported) the right of the line. At any rate we should have shared the hard knocks and the glory, which were distributed pretty freely to the colored troops then and there. The diary will give, better than can any continuous narrative, our ups and down of expectation in those days.

"CAMP SHAW, BEAUFORT, S. C.,

"February 7, 1864.

"Great are the uncertainties of military orders! Since our recall from Jacksonville we have had no such surprises as came to us on Wednesday night. It was our third day of a new tour of duty at the picket station. We had just got nicely settled,—men well tented, with good floors, and in high spirits, officers at out-stations all happy, Mrs. —— coming to stay with her husband, we at head-quarters just in order, house cleaned, moss-garlands up, camellias and jessamines in the tin wash-basins, baby in bliss;—our usual run of visitors had just set in, two Beaufort captains and a surgeon had just risen from a late dinner after a flag of truce, General Saxton and his wife had driven away but an hour or two before, we were all sitting about busy, with a great fire blazing, Mrs. D. had just remarked triumphantly, 'Last time I had but a mouthful here, and now I shall be here three weeks'—when—

"In dropped, like a bombshell, a despatch announcing that we were to be relieved by the Eighth Maine, the next morning, as General Gillmore had sent an order that we should be ready for departure from Beaufort at any moment.

"Conjectures, orders, packing, sending couriers to out-stations, were the employments of the evening; the men received the news with cheers, and we all came in next morning."

"February 11, 1864.

"For three days we have watched the river, and every little steamboat that comes up for coal brings out spy-glasses and conjectures, and 'Dar's de Fourf New Hampshire,'—for when that comes, it is said, we go. Meanwhile we hear stirring news from Florida, and the men are very impatient to be off. It is remarkable how much more thoroughly they look at things as soldiers than last year, and how much less as home-bound men,—the South-Carolinians, I mean, for of course the Floridians would naturally wish to go to Florida.

"But in every way I see the gradual change in them, sometimes with a sigh, as parents watch their children growing up and miss the droll speeches and the confiding ignorance of childhood. Sometimes it comes over me with a pang that they are growing more like white men,—less naive and less grotesque. Still, I think there is enough of it to last, and that their joyous buoyancy, at least, will hold out while life does.

"As for our destination, our greatest fear is of finding ourselves posted at Hilton Head and going no farther. As a dashing Irish officer remarked the other day, 'If we are ordered away anywhere, I hope it will be either to go to Florida or else stay here!'"

"Sublime uncertainties again!

"After being ordered in from picket, under marching orders; after the subsequent ten days of uncertainty; after watching every steamboat that came up the river, to see if the Fourth New Hampshire was on board,—at last the regiment came.

"Then followed another break; there was no transportation to take us. At last a boat was notified.

"Then General Saxton, as anxious to keep us as was the regiment to go, played his last card in small-pox, telegraphing to department head-quarters that we had it dangerously in the regiment. (N. B. All varioloid, light at that, and besides, we always have it.)

"Then the order came to leave behind the sick and those who had been peculiarly exposed, and embark the rest next day.

"Great was the jubilee! The men were up, I verily believe, by three in the morning, and by eight the whole camp was demolished or put in wagons, and we were on our way. The soldiers of the Fourth New Hampshire swarmed in; every board was swept away by them; there had been a time when colored boards (if I may delicately so express myself) were repudiated by white soldiers, but that epoch had long since passed. I gave my new tent-frame, even the latch, to Colonel Bell; ditto Lieutenant-Colonel to Lieutenant-Colonel.

"Down we marched, the men singing 'John Brown' and 'Marching Along' and 'Gwine in de Wilderness'; women in tears and smiles lined the way. We halted opposite the dear General's; we cheered, he speeched, I speeched, we all embraced symbolically, and cheered some more. Then we went to work at the wharf; vast wagon-loads of tents, rations, ordnance, and what-not disappeared in the capacious maw of the Delaware. In the midst of it all came riding down General Saxton with a despatch from Hilton Head:—

"'If you think the amount of small-pox in the First South Carolina Volunteers sufficient, the order will be countermanded.'

"'What shall I say?' quoth the guilty General, perceiving how preposterously too late the negotiation was reopened.

"'Say, sir?' quoth I. 'Say that we are on board already and the small-pox left behind. Say we had only thirteen cases, chiefly varioloid, and ten almost well.'

"Our blood was up with a tremendous morning's work done, and, rather than turn back, we felt ready to hold down Major-General Gillmore, commanding department, and all his staff upon the wharf, and vaccinate them by main force.

"So General Saxton rode away, and we worked away. Just as the last wagon-load but one was being transferred to the omnivorous depths of the Delaware,—which I should think would have been filled ten times over with what we had put into it,—down rode the General with a fiendish joy in his bright eyes and held out a paper,—one of the familiar rescripts from headquarters.

"'The marching orders of the First South Carolina Volunteers are hereby countermanded.'

"'Major Trowbridge,' said I, 'will you give my compliments to Lieutenant Hooper, somewhere in the hold of that steamer, and direct him to set his men at work to bring out every individual article which they have carried hi.' And I sat down on a pile of boards.

"'You will return to your old camping-ground, Colonel,' said the General, placidly. 'Now,' he added with serene satisfaction, 'we will have some brigade drills!'

"Brigade drills! Since Mr. Pickwick, with his heartless tomato-sauce and warming-pans, there had been nothing so aggravating as to try to solace us, who were as good as on board ship and under way,—nay, in imagination as far up the St. John's as Pilatka at least,—with brigade drills! It was very kind and flattering in him to wish to keep us. But unhappily we had made up our minds to go.

"Never did officer ride at the head of a battalion of more wobegone, spiritless wretches than I led back from Beaufort that day. 'When I march down to de landin',' said one of the men afterwards, 'my knapsack full of feathers. Comin' back, he lead!' And the lead, instead of the feathers, rested on the heart of every one.

"As if the disappointment itself were not sufficient, we had to return to our pretty camp, accustomed to its drawing-room order, and find it a desert. Every board gone from the floors, the screens torn down from the poles, all the little conveniences scattered, and, to crown all, a cold breeze such as we had not known since New-Year's Day blowing across the camp and flooding everything with dust. I sincerely hope the regiment would never behave after a defeat as they behaved then. Every man seemed crushed, officers and soldiers alike; when they broke ranks, they went and lay down like sheep where their tents used to be, or wandered disconsolately about, looking for their stray belongings. The scene was so infinitely dolorous that it gradually put me in the highest spirits; the ludicrousness of the whole affair was so complete, there was nothing to do but laugh. The horrible dust blew till every officer had some black spot on his nose which paralyzed pathos. Of course the only way was to set them all at work as soon as possible; and work them we did,—I at the camp and the Major at the wharf,—loading and unloading wagons and just reversing all which the morning had done.

"The New Hampshire men were very considerate, and gave back most of what they had taken, though many of our men were really too delicate or proud to ask or even take what they had once given to soldiers or to the colored people. I had no such delicacy about my tent-frame, and by night things had resumed something of their old aspect, and cheerfulness was in part restored. Yet long after this I found one first sergeant absolutely in tears,—a Florida man, most of whose kindred were up the St. John's. It was very natural that the men from that region should feel thus bitterly, but it shows how much of the habit of soldiers they have all acquired, that the South Carolina men, who were leaving the neighborhood of their families for an indefinite time, were just as eager to go, and not one deserted, though they knew it for a week beforehand. No doubt my precarious health makes it now easier for me personally to remain here—easier on reflection at least—than for the others. At the same time Florida is fascinating, and offers not only adventure, but the command of a brigade. Certainly at the last moment there was not a sacrifice I would not have made rather than wrench myself and others away from the expedition. We are, of course, thrown back into the old uncertainty, and if the small-pox subsides (and it is really diminishing decidedly) we may yet come in at the wrong end of the Florida affair."

"February 19.

"Not a bit of it! This morning the General has ridden up radiant, has seen General Gillmore, who has decided not to order us to Florida at all, nor withdraw any of this garrison. Moreover, he says that all which is intended in Florida is done,—that there will be no advance to Tallahassee, and General Seymour will establish a camp of instruction in Jacksonville. Well, if that is all, it is a lucky escape."

We little dreamed that on that very day the march toward Olustee was beginning. The battle took place next day, and I add one more extract to show how the news reached Beaufort.

"February 23, 1864.

"There was the sound of revelry by night at a ball in Beaufort last night, in a new large building beautifully decorated. All the collected flags of the garrison hung round and over us, as if the stars and stripes were devised for an ornament alone. The array of uniforms was such that a civilian became a distinguished object, much more a lady. All would have gone according to the proverbial marriage-bell, I suppose, had there not been a slight palpable shadow over all of us from hearing vague stories of a lost battle in Florida, and from the thought that perhaps the very ambulances in which we rode to the ball were ours only until the wounded or the dead might tenant them.

"General Gillmore only came, I supposed, to put a good face upon the matter. He went away soon, and General Saxton went; then came a rumor that the Cosmopolitan had actually arrived with wounded, but still the dance went on. There was nothing unfeeling about it,—one gets used to things,—when suddenly, in the midst of the 'Lancers,' there came a perfect hush, the music ceasing, a few surgeons went hastily to and fro, as if conscience-stricken (I should think they might have been),—then there 'waved a mighty shadow in,' as in Uhland's 'Black Knight,' and as we all stood wondering we were 'ware of General Saxton, who strode hastily down the hall, his pale face very resolute, and looking almost sick with anxiety. He had just been on board the steamer; there were two hundred and fifty wounded men just arrived, and the ball must end. Not that there was anything for us to do; but the revel was mistimed, and must be ended; it was wicked to be dancing, with such a scene of suffering near by.

"Of course the ball was instantly broken up, though with some murmurings and some longings of appetite, on the part of some, toward the wasted supper.

"Later, I went on board the boat. Among the long lines of wounded, black and white intermingled, there was the wonderful quiet which usually prevails on such occasions. Not a sob nor a groan, except from those undergoing removal. It is not self-control, but chiefly the shock to the system produced by severe wounds, especially gunshot wounds, and which usually keeps the patient stiller at first than any later time.

"A company from my regiment waited on the wharf, in their accustomed dusky silence, and I longed to ask them what they thought of our Florida disappointment now? In view of what they saw, did they still wish we had been there? I confess that in presence of all that human suffering, I could not wish it. But I would not have suggested any such thought to them.

"I found our kind-hearted ladies, Mrs. Chamberlin and Mrs. Dewhurst, on board the steamer, but there was nothing for them to do, and we walked back to camp in the radiant moonlight; Mrs. Chamberlin more than ever strengthened in her blushing woman's philosophy, 'I don't care who wins the laurels, provided we don't!'"

"February 29.

"But for a few trivial cases of varioloid, we should certainly have been in that disastrous fight. We were confidently expected for several days at Jacksonville, and the commanding general told Colonel Hallowell that we, being the oldest colored regiment, would have the right of the line. This was certainly to miss danger and glory very closely."



Chapter 12. The Negro as a Soldier

There was in our regiment a very young recruit, named Sam Roberts, of whom Trowbridge used to tell this story. Early in the war Trowbridge had been once sent to Amelia Island with a squad of men, under direction of Commodore Goldsborough, to remove the negroes from the island. As the officers stood on the beach, talking to some of the older freedmen, they saw this urchin peeping at them from front and rear in a scrutinizing way, for which his father at last called him to account, as thus:—

"Hi! Sammy, what you's doin', chile?"

"Daddy," said the inquisitive youth, "don't you know mas'r tell us Yankee hab tail? I don't see no tail, daddy!"

There were many who went to Port Royal during the war, in civil or military positions, whose previous impressions of the colored race were about as intelligent as Sam's view of themselves. But, for once, I had always had so much to do with fugitive slaves, and had studied the whole subject with such interest, that I found not much to learn or unlearn as to this one point. Their courage I had before seen tested; their docile and lovable qualities I had known; and the only real surprise that experience brought me was in finding them so little demoralized. I had not allowed for the extreme remoteness and seclusion of their lives, especially among the Sea Islands. Many of them had literally spent their whole existence on some lonely island or remote plantation, where the master never came, and the overseer only once or twice a week. With these exceptions, such persons had never seen a white face, and of the excitements or sins of larger communities they had not a conception. My friend Colonel Hallo-well, of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, told me that he had among his men some of the worst reprobates of Northern cities. While I had some men who were unprincipled and troublesome, there was not one whom I could call a hardened villain. I was constantly expecting to find male Topsies, with no notions of good and plenty of evil. But I never found one. Among the most ignorant there was very often a childlike absence of vices, which was rather to be classed as inexperience than as innocence, but which had some of the advantages of both.

Apart from this, they were very much like other men. General Saxton, examining with some impatience a long list of questions from some philanthropic Commission at the North, respecting the traits and habits of the freedmen, bade some staff-officer answer them all in two words,—"Intensely human." We all admitted that it was a striking and comprehensive description.

For instance, as to courage. So far as I have seen, the mass of men are naturally courageous up to a certain point. A man seldom runs away from danger which he ought to face, unless others run; each is apt to keep with the mass, and colored soldiers have more than usual of this gregariousness. In almost every regiment, black or white, there are a score or two of men who are naturally daring, who really hunger after dangerous adventures, and are happiest when allowed to seek them. Every commander gradually finds out who these men are, and habitually uses them; certainly I had such, and I remember with delight their bearing, their coolness, and their dash. Some of them were negroes, some mulattoes. One of them would have passed for white, with brown hair and blue eyes, while others were so black you could hardly see their features. These picked men varied in other respects too; some were neat and well-drilled soldiers, while others were slovenly, heedless fellows,—the despair of their officers at inspection, their pride on a raid. They were the natural scouts and rangers of the regiment; they had the two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which Napoleon thought so rare. The mass of the regiment rose to the same level under excitement, and were more excitable, I think, than whites, but neither more nor less courageous.

Perhaps the best proof of a good average of courage among them was in the readiness they always showed for any special enterprise. I do not remember ever to have had the slightest difficulty in obtaining volunteers, but rather in keeping down the number. The previous pages include many illustrations of this, as well as of then: endurance of pain and discomfort. For instance, one of my lieutenants, a very daring Irishman, who had served for eight years as a sergeant of regular artillery in Texas, Utah, and South Carolina, said he had never been engaged in anything so risky as our raid up the St. Mary's. But in truth it seems to me a mere absurdity to deliberately argue the question of courage, as applied to men among whom I waked and slept, day and night, for so many months together. As well might he who has been wandering for years upon the desert, with a Bedouin escort, discuss the courage of the men whose tents have been his shelter and whose spears his guard. We, their officers, did not go there to teach lessons, but to receive them. There were more than a hundred men in the ranks who had voluntarily met more dangers in their escape from slavery than any of my young captains had incurred in all their lives.

There was a family named Wilson, I remember, of which we had several representatives. Three or four brothers had planned an escape from the interior to our lines; they finally decided that the youngest should stay and take care of the old mother; the rest, with their sister and her children, came in a "dug-out" down one of the rivers. They were fired upon, again and again, by the pickets along the banks, until finally every man on board was wounded; and still they got safely through. When the bullets began to fly about them, the woman shed tears, and her little girl of nine said to her, "Don't cry, mother, Jesus will help you," and then the child began praying as the wounded men still urged the boat along. This the mother told me, but I had previously heard it from on officer who was on the gunboat that picked them up,—a big, rough man, whose voice fairly broke as he described their appearance. He said that the mother and child had been hid for nine months in the woods before attempting their escape, and the child would speak to no one,—indeed, she hardly would when she came to our camp. She was almost white, and this officer wished to adopt her, but the mother said, "I would do anything but that for oonah," this being a sort of Indian formation of the second-person-plural, such as they sometimes use. This same officer afterwards saw a reward offered for this family in a Savannah paper.

I used to think that I should not care to read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hi our camp; it would have seemed tame. Any group of men in a tent would have had more exciting tales to tell. I needed no fiction when I had Fanny Wright, for instance, daily passing to and fro before my tent, with her shy little girl clinging to her skirts. Fanny was a modest little mulatto woman, a soldier's wife, and a company laundress. She had escaped from the main-land in a boat, with that child and another. Her baby was shot dead in her arms, and she reached our lines with one child safe on earth and the other in heaven. I never found it needful to give any elementary instructions in courage to Fanny's husband, you may be sure.

There was another family of brothers in the regiment named Miller. Their grandmother, a fine-looking old woman, nearly seventy, I should think, but erect as a pine-tree, used sometimes to come and visit them. She and her husband had once tried to escape from a plantation near Savannah. They had failed, and had been brought back; the husband had received five hundred lashes, and while the white men on the plantation were viewing the punishment, she was collecting her children and grandchildren, to the number of twenty-two, in a neighboring marsh, preparatory to another attempt that night. They found a flat-boat which had been rejected as unseaworthy, got on board,—still under the old woman's orders,—and drifted forty miles down the river to our lines. Trowbridge happened to be on board the gunboat which picked them up, and he said that when the "flat" touched the side of the vessel, the grandmother rose to her full height, with her youngest grandchild in her arms, and said only, "My God! are we free?" By one of those coincidences of which life is full, her husband escaped also, after his punishment, and was taken up by the same gunboat.

I hardly need point out that my young lieutenants did not have to teach the principles of courage to this woman's grandchildren.

I often asked myself why it was that, with this capacity of daring and endurance, they had not kept the land in a perpetual flame of insurrection; why, especially since the opening of the war, they had kept so still. The answer was to be found in the peculiar temperament of the races, in their religious faith, and in the habit of patience that centuries had fortified. The shrewder men all said substantially the same thing. What was the use of insurrection, where everything was against them? They had no knowledge, no money, no arms, no drill, no organization,—above all, no mutual confidence. It was the tradition among them that all insurrections were always betrayed by somebody. They had no mountain passes to defend like the Maroons of Jamaica,—no unpenetrable swamps, like the Maroons of Surinam. Where they had these, even on a small scale, they had used them,—as in certain swamps round Savannah and in the everglades of Florida, where they united with the Indians, and would stand fire—so I was told by General Saxton, who had fought them there—when the Indians would retreat.

It always seemed to me that, had I been a slave, my life would have been one long scheme of insurrection. But I learned to respect the patient self-control of those who had waited till the course of events should open a better way. When it came they accepted it. Insurrection on their part would at once have divided the Northern sentiment; and a large part of our army would have joined with the Southern army to hunt them down. By their waiting till we needed them, their freedom was secured.

Two things chiefly surprised me in their feeling toward their former masters,—the absence of affection and the absence of revenge. I expected to find a good deal of the patriarchal feeling. It always seemed to me a very ill-applied emotion, as connected with the facts and laws of American slavery,—still I expected to find it. I suppose that my men and their families and visitors may have had as much of it as the mass of freed slaves; but certainly they had not a particle. I never could cajole one of them, in his most discontented moment, into regretting "ole mas'r time" for a single instant. I never heard one speak of the masters except as natural enemies. Yet they were perfectly discriminating as to individuals; many of them claimed to have had kind owners, and some expressed great gratitude to them for particular favors received. It was not the individuals, but the ownership, of which they complained. That they saw to be a wrong which no special kindnesses could right. On this, as on all points connected with slavery, they understood the matter as clearly as Garrison or Phillips; the wisest philosophy could teach them nothing as to that, nor could any false philosophy befog them. After all, personal experience is the best logician.

Certainly this indifference did not proceed from any want of personal affection, for they were the most affectionate people among whom I had ever lived. They attached themselves to every officer who deserved love, and to some who did not; and if they failed to show it to their masters, it proved the wrongfulness of the mastery. On the other hand, they rarely showed one gleam of revenge, and I shall never forget the self-control with which one of our best sergeants pointed out to me, at Jacksonville, the very place where one of his brothers had been hanged by the whites for leading a party of fugitive slaves. He spoke of it as a historic matter, without any bearing on the present issue.

But side by side with this faculty of patience, there was a certain tropical element in the men, a sort of fiery ecstasy when aroused, which seemed to link them by blood with the French Turcos, and made them really resemble their natural enemies, the Celts, far more than the Anglo-Saxon temperament. To balance this there were great individual resources when alone,—a sort of Indian wiliness and subtlety of resource. Their gregariousness and love of drill made them more easy to keep in hand than white American troops, who rather like to straggle or go in little squads, looking out for themselves, without being bothered with officers. The blacks prefer organization.

The point of inferiority that I always feared, though I never had occasion to prove it, was that they might show less fibre, less tough and dogged resistance, than whites, during a prolonged trial,—a long, disastrous march, for instance, or the hopeless defence of a besieged town. I should not be afraid of their mutinying or running away, but of their drooping and dying. It might not turn out so; but I mention it for the sake of fairness, and to avoid overstating the merits of these troops. As to the simple general fact of courage and reliability I think no officer in our camp ever thought of there being any difference between black and white. And certainly the opinions of these officers, who for years risked their lives every moment on the fidelity of their men, were worth more than those of all the world beside.

No doubt there were reasons why this particular war was an especially favorable test of the colored soldiers. They had more to fight for than the whites. Besides the flag and the Union, they had home and wife and child. They fought with ropes round their necks, and when orders were issued that the officers of colored troops should be put to death on capture, they took a grim satisfaction. It helped their esprit de corps immensely. With us, at least, there was to be no play-soldier. Though they had begun with a slight feeling of inferiority to the white troops, this compliment substituted a peculiar sense of self-respect. And even when the new colored regiments began to arrive from the North my men still pointed out this difference,—that in case of ultimate defeat, the Northern troops, black or white, would go home, while the First South Carolina must fight it out or be re-enslaved. This was one thing that made the St. John's River so attractive to them and even to me;—it was so much nearer the everglades. I used seriously to ponder, during the darker periods of the war, whether I might not end my days as an outlaw,—a leader of Maroons.

Meanwhile, I used to try to make some capital for the Northern troops, in their estimate, by pointing out that it was a disinterested thing in these men from the free States, to come down there and fight, that the slaves might be free. But they were apt keenly to reply, that many of the white soldiers disavowed this object, and said that that was not the object of the war, nor even likely to be its end. Some of them even repeated Mr. Seward's unfortunate words to Mr. Adams, which some general had been heard to quote. So, on the whole, I took nothing by the motion, as was apt to be the case with those who spoke a good word for our Government, in those vacillating and half proslavery days.

At any rate, this ungenerous discouragement had this good effect, that it touched their pride; they would deserve justice, even if they did not obtain it. This pride was afterwards severely tested during the disgraceful period when the party of repudiation in Congress temporarily deprived them of their promised pay. In my regiment the men never mutinied, nor even threatened mutiny; they seemed to make it a matter of honor to do then: part, even if the Government proved a defaulter; but one third of them, including the best men in the regiment, quietly refused to take a dollar's pay, at the reduced price. "We'se gib our sogerin' to de Guv'ment, Gunnel," they said, "but we won't 'spise ourselves so much for take de seben dollar." They even made a contemptuous ballad, of which I once caught a snatch.

"Ten dollar a month! Tree ob dat for clothin'l Go to Washington Fight for Linkum's darter!"

This "Lincoln's daughter" stood for the Goddess of Liberty, it would seem. They would be true to her, but they would not take the half-pay. This was contrary to my advice, and to that of other officers; but I now think it was wise. Nothing less than this would have called the attention of the American people to this outrageous fraud.*

* See Appendix.

The same slow forecast had often marked their action in other ways. One of our ablest sergeants, Henry Mclntyre, who had earned two dollars and a half per day as a master-carpenter in Florida, and paid one dollar and a half to his master, told me that he had deliberately refrained from learning to read, because that knowledge exposed the slaves to so much more watching and suspicion. This man and a few others had built on contract the greater part of the town of Micanopy in Florida, and was a thriving man when his accustomed discretion failed for once, and he lost all. He named his child William Lincoln, and it brought upon him such suspicion that he had to make his escape.

I cannot conceive what people at the North mean by speaking of the negroes as a bestial or brutal race. Except in some insensibility to animal pain, I never knew of an act in my regiment which I should call brutal. In reading Kay's "Condition of the English Peasantry" I was constantly struck with the unlikeness of my men to those therein described. This could not proceed from my prejudices as an abolitionist, for they would have led me the other way, and indeed I had once written a little essay to show the brutalizing influences of slavery. I learned to think that we abolitionists had underrated the suffering produced by slavery among the negroes, but had overrated the demoralization. Or rather, we did not know how the religious temperament of the negroes had checked the demoralization. Yet again, it must be admitted that this temperament, born of sorrow and oppression, is far more marked in the slave than in the native African.

Theorize as we may, there was certainly in our camp an average tone of propriety which all visitors noticed, and which was not created, but only preserved by discipline. I was always struck, not merely by the courtesy of the men, but also by a certain sober decency of language. If a man had to report to me any disagreeable fact, for instance, he was sure to do it with gravity and decorum, and not blurt it out in an offensive way. And it certainly was a significant fact that the ladies of our camp, when we were so fortunate as to have such guests, the young wives, especially, of the adjutant and quartermaster, used to go among the tents when the men were off duty, in order to hear their big pupils read and spell, without the slightest fear of annoyance. I do not mean direct annoyance or insult, for no man who valued his life would have ventured that in presence of the others, but I mean the annoyance of accidentally seeing or hearing improprieties not intended for them. They both declared that they would not have moved about with anything like the same freedom in any white camp they had ever entered, and it always roused their indignation to hear the negro race called brutal or depraved.

This came partly from natural good manners, partly from the habit of deference, partly from ignorance of the refined and ingenious evil which is learned in large towns; but a large part came from their strongly religious temperament. Their comparative freedom from swearing, for instance,—an abstinence which I fear military life did not strengthen,—was partly a matter of principle. Once I heard one of them say to another, in a transport of indignation, "Ha-a-a, boy, s'pose I no be a Christian, I cuss you sol"—which was certainly drawing pretty hard upon the bridle. "Cuss," however, was a generic term for all manner of evil speaking; they would say, "He cuss me fool," or "He cuss me coward," as if the essence of propriety were in harsh and angry speech,—which I take to be good ethics. But certainly, if Uncle Toby could have recruited his army in Flanders from our ranks, their swearing would have ceased to be historic.

It used to seem to me that never, since Cromwell's time, had there been soldiers in whom the religious element held such a place. "A religious army," "a gospel army," were their frequent phrases. In their prayer-meetings there was always a mingling, often quaint enough, of the warlike and the pious. "If each one of us was a praying man," said Corporal Thomas Long in a sermon, "it appears to me that we could fight as well with prayers as with bullets,—for the Lord has said that if you have faith even as a grain of mustard-seed cut into four parts, you can say to the sycamore-tree, Arise, and it will come up." And though Corporal Long may have got a little perplexed in his botany, his faith proved itself by works, for he volunteered and went many miles on a solitary scouting expedition into the enemy's country in Florida, and got back safe, after I had given him up for lost.

The extremes of religious enthusiasm I did not venture to encourage, for I could not do it honestly; neither did I discourage them, but simply treated them with respect, and let them have their way, so long as they did not interfere with discipline. In general they promoted it. The mischievous little drummer-boys, whose scrapes and quarrels were the torment of my existence, might be seen kneeling together in their tents to say their prayers at night, and I could hope that their slumbers were blessed by some spirit of peace, such as certainly did not rule over their waking. The most reckless and daring fellows in the regiment were perfect fatalists in theur confidence that God would watch over them, and that if they died, it would be because theur time had come. This almost excessive faith, and the love of freedom and of their families, all co-operated with their pride as soldiers to make them do their duty. I could not have spared any of these incentives. Those of our officers who were personally the least influenced by such considerations, still saw the need of encouraging them among the men.

I am bound to say that this strongly devotional turn was not always accompanied by the practical virtues; but neither was it strikingly divorced from them. A few men, I remember, who belonged to the ancient order of hypocrites, but not many. Old Jim Cushman was our favorite representative scamp. He used to vex his righteous soul over the admission of the unregenerate to prayer-meetings, and went off once shaking his head and muttering, "Too much goat shout wid de sheep." But he who objected to this profane admixture used to get our mess-funds far more hopelessly mixed with his own, when he went out to buy chickens. And I remember that, on being asked by our Major, in that semi-Ethiopian dialect into which we sometimes slid, "How much wife you got, Jim?" the veteran replied, with a sort of penitence for lost opportunities, "On'y but four, Sah!"

Another man of somewhat similar quality went among us by the name of Henry Ward Beecher, from a remarkable resemblance in face and figure to that sturdy divine. I always felt a sort of admiration for this worthy, because of the thoroughness with which he outwitted me, and the sublime impudence in which he culminated. He got a series of passes from me, every week or two, to go and see his wife on a neighboring plantation, and finally, when this resource seemed exhausted, he came boldly for one more pass, that he might go and be married.

We used to quote him a good deal, also, as a sample of a certain Shakespearian boldness of personification in which the men sometimes indulged. Once, I remember, his captain had given him a fowling-piece to clean. Henry Ward had left it in the captain's tent, and the latter, finding it, had transferred the job to some one else.

Then came a confession, in this precise form, with many dignified gesticulations:—

"Cappen! I took dat gun, and I put bun in Cappen tent. Den I look, and de gun not dar! Den Conscience say, Cappen mus' hab gib dat gun to somebody else for clean. Den I say, Conscience, you reason correck."

Compare Lancelot Gobbo's soliloquy in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona"!

Still, I maintain that, as a whole, the men were remarkably free from inconvenient vices. There was no more lying and stealing than in average white regiments. The surgeon was not much troubled by shamming sickness, and there were not a great many complaints of theft. There was less quarrelling than among white soldiers, and scarcely ever an instance of drunkenness. Perhaps the influence of their officers had something to do with this; for not a ration of whiskey was ever issued to the men, nor did I ever touch it, while in the army, nor approve a requisition for any of the officers, without which it could not easily be obtained. In this respect our surgeons fortunately agreed with me, and we never had reason to regret it. I believe the use of ardent spirits to be as useless and injurious in the army as on board ship, and among the colored troops, especially, who had never been accustomed to it, I think that it did only harm.

The point of greatest laxity in their moral habits—the want of a high standard of chastity—was not one which affected their camp life to any great extent, and it therefore came less under my observation. But I found to my relief that, whatever their deficiency in this respect, it was modified by the general quality of their temperament, and indicated rather a softening and relaxation than a hardening and brutalizing of their moral natures. Any insult or violence in this direction was a thing unknown. I never heard of an instance. It was not uncommon for men to have two or three wives in different plantations,—the second, or remoter, partner being called a "'broad wife,"—i.e. wife abroad. But the whole tendency was toward marriage, and this state of things was only regarded as a bequest from "mas'r time."

I knew a great deal about their marriages, for they often consulted me, and took my counsel as lovers are wont to do,—that is, when it pleased their fancy. Sometimes they would consult their captains first, and then come to me in despairing appeal. "Cap'n Scroby [Trowbridge] he acvise me not for marry dis lady, 'cause she hab seben chil'en. What for use? Cap'n Scroby can't lub for me. I mus' lub for myself, and I lub he." I remember that on this occasion "he" stood by, a most unattractive woman, jet black, with an old pink muslin dress, torn white cotton gloves, and a very flowery bonnet, that must have descended through generations of tawdry mistresses.

I felt myself compelled to reaffirm the decision of the inferior court. The result was as usual. They were married the next day, and I believe that she proved an excellent wife, though she had seven children, whose father was also in the regiment. If she did not, I know many others who did, and certainly I have never seen more faithful or more happy marriages than among that people.

The question was often asked, whether the Southern slaves or the Northern free blacks made the best soldiers. It was a compliment to both classes that each officer usually preferred those whom he had personally commanded. I preferred those who had been slaves, for their greater docility and affectionateness, for the powerful stimulus which their new freedom gave, and for the fact that they were fighting, in a manner, for their own homes and firesides. Every one of these considerations afforded a special aid to discipline, and cemented a peculiar tie of sympathy between them and their officers. They seemed like clansmen, and had a more confiding and filial relation to us than seemed to me to exist in the Northern colored regiments.

So far as the mere habits of slavery went, they were a poor preparation for military duty. Inexperienced officers often assumed that, because these men had been slaves before enlistment, they would bear to be treated as such afterwards. Experience proved the contrary. The more strongly we marked the difference between the slave and the soldier, the better for the regiment. One half of military duty lies in obedience, the other half in self-respect. A soldier without self-respect is worthless. Consequently there were no regiments in which it was so important to observe the courtesies and proprieties of military life as in these. I had to caution the officers to be more than usually particular in returning the salutations of the men; to be very careful in their dealings with those on picket or guard-duty; and on no account to omit the titles of the non-commissioned officers. So, in dealing out punishments, we had carefully to avoid all that was brutal and arbitrary, all that savored of the overseer. Any such dealing found them as obstinate and contemptuous as was Topsy when Miss Ophelia undertook to chastise her. A system of light punishments, rigidly administered according to the prescribed military forms, had more weight with them than any amount of angry severity. To make them feel as remote as possible from the plantation, this was essential. By adhering to this, and constantly appealing to their pride as soldiers and their sense of duty, we were able to maintain a high standard of discipline,—so, at least, the inspecting officers said,—and to get rid, almost entirely, of the more degrading class of punishments,—standing on barrels, tying up by the thumbs, and the ball and chain.

In all ways we had to educate their self-respect. For instance, at first they disliked to obey their own non-commissioned officers. "I don't want him to play de white man ober me," was a sincere objection. They had been so impressed with a sense of inferiority that the distinction extended to the very principles of honor. "I ain't got colored-man principles," said Corporal London Simmons, indignantly defending himself from some charge before me. "I'se got white-gemman principles. I'se do my best. If Cap'n tell me to take a man, s'pose de man be as big as a house, I'll clam hold on him till I die, inception [excepting] I'm sick."

But it was plain that this feeling was a bequest of slavery, which military life would wear off. We impressed it upon them that they did not obey their officers because they were white, but because they were their officers, just as the Captain must obey me, and I the General; that we were all subject to military law, and protected by it in turn. Then we taught them to take pride in having good material for noncommissioned officers among themselves, and in obeying them. On my arrival there was one white first sergeant, and it was a question whether to appoint others. This I prevented, but left that one, hoping the men themselves would at last petition for his removal, which at length they did. He was at once detailed on other duty. The picturesqueness of the regiment suffered, for he was very tall and fair, and I liked to see him step forward in the centre when the line of first sergeants came together at dress-parade. But it was a help to discipline to eliminate the Saxon, for it recognized a principle.

Afterwards I had excellent battalion-drills without a single white officer, by way of experiment; putting each company under a sergeant, and going through the most difficult movements, such as division-columns and oblique-squares. And as to actual discipline, it is doing no injustice to the line-officers of the regiment to say that none of them received from the men more implicit obedience than Color-Sergeant Rivers. I should have tried to obtain commissions for him and several others before I left the regiment, had their literary education been sufficient; and such an attempt was finally made by Lieutenant-Colonel Trowbridge, my successor in immediate command, but it proved unsuccessful. It always seemed to me an insult to those brave men to have novices put over their heads, on the ground of color alone; and the men felt it the more keenly as they remained longer in service. There were more than seven hundred enlisted men in the regiment, when mustered out after more than three years' service. The ranks had been kept full by enlistment, but there were only fourteen line-officers instead of the full thirty. The men who should have filled those vacancies were doing duty as sergeants in the ranks.

In what respect were the colored troops a source of disappointment? To me in one respect only,—that of health. Their health improved, indeed, as they grew more familiar with military life; but I think that neither their physical nor moral temperament gave them that toughness, that obstinate purpose of living, which sustains the more materialistic Anglo-Saxon. They had not, to be sure, the same predominant diseases, suffering in the pulmonary, not in the digestive organs; but they suffered a good deal. They felt malaria less, but they were more easily choked by dust and made ill by dampness. On the other hand, they submitted more readily to sanitary measures than whites, and, with efficient officers, were more easily kept clean. They were injured throughout the army by an undue share of fatigue duty, which is not only exhausting but demoralizing to a soldier; by the un-suitableness of the rations, which gave them salt meat instead of rice and hominy; and by the lack of good medical attendance. Their childlike constitutions peculiarly needed prompt and efficient surgical care; but almost all the colored troops were enlisted late in the war, when it was hard to get good surgeons for any regiments, and especially for these. In this respect I had nothing to complain of, since there were no surgeons in the army for whom I would have exchanged my own.

And this late arrival on the scene affected not only the medical supervision of the colored troops, but their opportunity for a career. It is not my province to write their history, nor to vindicate them, nor to follow them upon those larger fields compared with which the adventures of my regiment appear but a partisan warfare. Yet this, at least, may be said. The operations on the South Atlantic coast, which long seemed a merely subordinate and incidental part of the great contest, proved to be one of the final pivots on which it turned. All now admit that the fate of the Confederacy was decided by Sherman's march to the sea. Port Royal was the objective point to which he marched, and he found the Department of the South, when he reached it, held almost exclusively by colored troops. Next to the merit of those who made the march was that of those who held open the door. That service will always remain among the laurels of the black regiments.



Chapter 13. Conclusion

My personal forebodings proved to be correct, and so were the threats of the surgeons. In May, 1864, I went home invalided, was compelled to resign in October from the same cause, and never saw the First South Carolina again. Nor did any one else see it under that appellation, for about that time its name was changed to the Thirty-Third United States Colored Troops, "a most vague and heartless baptism," as the man in the story says. It was one of those instances of injudicious sacrifice of esprit de corps which were so frequent in our army. All the pride of my men was centred in "de Fus' Souf"; the very words were a recognition of the loyal South as against the disloyal. To make the matter worse, it had been originally designed to apply the new numbering only to the new regiments, and so the early numbers were all taken up before the older regiments came in. The governors of States, by especial effort, saved their colored troops from this chagrin; but we found here, as more than once before, the disadvantage of having no governor to stand by us. "It's a far cry to Loch Awe," said the Highland proverb. We knew to our cost that it was a far cry to Washington in those days, unless an officer left his duty and stayed there all the time.

In June, 1864, the regiment was ordered to Folly Island, and remained there and on Cole's Island till the siege of Charleston was done. It took part in the battle of Honey Hill, and in the capture of a fort on James Island, of which Corporal Robert Vendross wrote triumphantly in a letter, "When we took the pieces we found that we recapt our own pieces back that we lost on Willtown Revear (River) and thank the Lord did not lose but seven men out of our regiment."

In February, 1865, the regiment was ordered to Charleston to do provost and guard duty, in March to Savannah, in June to Hamburg and Aiken, in September to Charleston and its neighborhood, and was finally mustered out of service—after being detained beyond its three years, so great was the scarcity of troops—on the 9th of February, 1866. With dramatic fitness this muster-out took place at Fort Wagner, above the graves of Shaw and his men. I give in the Appendix the farewell address of Lieutenant-Colonel Trowbridge, who commanded the regiment from the time I left it. Brevet Brigadier-General W. T. Bennett, of the One Hundred and Second United States Colored Troops, who was assigned to the command, never actually held it, being always in charge of a brigade.

The officers and men are scattered far and wide. One of our captains was a member of the South Carolina Constitutional Convention, and is now State Treasurer; three of our sergeants were in that Convention, including Sergeant Prince Rivers; and he and Sergeant Henry Hayne are still members of the State Legislature. Both in that State and hi Florida the former members of the regiment are generally prospering, so far as I can hear. The increased self-respect of army life fitted them to do the duties of civil life. It is not in nature that the jealousy of race should die out in this generation, but I trust they will not see the fulfilment of Corporal Simon Cram's prediction. Simon was one of the shrewdest old fellows in the regiment, and he said to me once, as he was jogging out of Beaufort behind me, on the Shell Road, "I'se goin' to leave de Souf, Cunnel, when de war is over. I'se made up my mind dat dese yere Secesh will neber be cibilized in my time."

The only member of the regiment whom I have seen since leaving it is a young man, Cyrus Wiggins, who was brought off from the main-land in a dug-out, in broad day, before the very eyes of the rebel pickets, by Captain James S. Rogers, of my regiment. It was one of the most daring acts I ever saw, and as it happened under my own observation I was glad when the Captain took home with him this "captive of his bow and spear" to be educated under his eye in Massachusetts. Cyrus has done credit to his friends, and will be satisfied with nothing short of a college-training at Howard University. I have letters from the men, very quaint in handwriting and spelling; but he is the only one whom I have seen. Some time I hope to revisit those scenes, and shall feel, no doubt, like a bewildered Rip Van Winkle who once wore uniform.

We who served with the black troops have this peculiar satisfaction, that, whatever dignity or sacredness the memories of the war may have to others, they have more to us. In that contest all the ordinary ties of patriotism were the same, of course, to us as to the rest; they had no motives which we had not, as they have now no memories which are not also ours. But the peculiar privilege of associating with an outcast race, of training it to defend its rights and to perform its duties, this was our especial meed. The vacillating policy of the Government sometimes filled other officers with doubt and shame; until the negro had justice, they were but defending liberty with one hand and crushing it with the other. From this inconsistency we were free. Whatever the Government did, we at least were working in the right direction. If this was not recognized on our side of the lines, we knew that it was admitted on the other. Fighting with ropes round our necks, denied the ordinary courtesies of war till we ourselves compelled then: concession, we could at least turn this outlawry into a compliment. We had touched the pivot of the war. Whether this vast and dusky mass should prove the weakness of the nation or its strength, must depend in great measure, we knew, upon our efforts. Till the blacks were armed, there was no guaranty of their freedom. It was their demeanor under arms that shamed the nation into recognizing them as men.



APPENDIX

Appendix A

Roster of Officers

FIRST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS,

Afterwards Thirty-Third United States Colored Troops.

Colonels

T. W. HIGGINSON, 51st Mass. Vols., Nov. 10, 1862; Resigned,

Oct. 27, 1864. WM. T. BENNETT, 102d U. S. C. T., Dec. 18, 1864; Mustered out

with regiment

Lieutenant-Colonels

LIBERTY BILLINGS, Civil Life, Nov. 1, 1862; Dismissed by Examining Board, July 28, 1863.

JOHN D. STRONG, Promotion, July 28, 1863; Resigned, Aug. 15, 1864.

CHAS. T. TROWBRIDGE, Promotion, Dec. 9, 1864; Mustered out, &c.

Majors

JOHN D. STRONG, Civil Life, Oct. 21, 1862; Lt-Col., July 28, 1863. CHAS.

T. TROWBRIDGE, Promotion, Aug. 11, 1863; Lt.-Col., Dec. 9, 1864.

H. A. WHTTNEY, Promotion, Dec. 9, 1864; Mustered out, &c.

Surgeons

SETH ROGERS, Civil Life, Dec. 2, 1862; Resigned, Dec. 21, 1863.

WM. B. CRANDALL, 29th Ct, June 8, 1864; Mustered out, &c.

Assistant Surgeons

J. M. HAWKS, Civil Life, Oct 20, 1862; Surgeon 3d S. C. Vols.,

Oct. 29, 1863.

THOS. T. MINOR, 7th Ct., Jan. 8, 1863; Resigned, Nov. 21, 1864.

E. S. STUARD, Civil Life, Sept. 4, 1865; Mustered out, &c.

Chaplain

JAS. H. FOWLER, Civil Life, Oct. 24, 1862; Mustered out, &c.

Captains

CHAS. T. TROWBRIDGE, N. Y. Vol. Eng., Oct. 13, 1862; Major, Aug. 11, 1863.

WM. JAMES, 100th Pa., Oct. 13, 1862; Mustered out, &c.

W. J. RANDOLPH, 100th Pa., Oct. 13, 1862; Resigned, Jan. 29, 1864.

H. A. WHITNEY, 8th Me., Oct. 13, 1862; Major, Dec. 9, 1864.

ALEX. HEASLEY, 100th Pa., Oct 13, 1862; Killed at Augusta, Ga., Sept. 6, 1865.

GEORGE DOLLY, 8th Me., Nov. 1, 1862; Resigned, Oct. 30, 1863.

L. W. METCALF, 8th Me., Nov. 11, 1862; Mustered out, &c.

JAS. H. TONKING, N. Y. Vol. Eng., Nov. 17, 1862; Resigned, July 28, 1863.

JAS. S. ROGERS, 51st Mass., Dec. 6, 1862; Resigned, Oct. 20, 1863.

J. H. THIBADEAU, Promotion, Jan. 10, 1863; Mustered out, &c.

GEORGE D. WALKER, Promotion, July 28, 1863; Resigned, Sept 1, 1864.

WM. H. DANILSON, Promotion, July 28, 1863; Major 128th U. S. C. T., May, 1865 [now 1st Lt 40th U. S. Infantry].

WM. W. SAMPSON, Promotion, Nov. 5, 1863; Mustered out, &c.

JOHN M. THOMPSON, Promotion, Nov. 7, 1863; Mustered out, &c. [Now 1st Lt. and Bvt Capt. 38th U. S. Infy.]

ABR. W. JACKSON, Promotion, April 30, 1864; Resigned, Aug. 15, 1865.

NILES G. PARKER, Promotion, Feb., 1865; Mustered out, &c.

CHAS. W. HOOPER, Promotion, Sept, 1865; Mustered out, &c.

E. C. MERMAM, Promotion, Sept., 1865; Resigned, Dec. 4, 1865.

E. W. ROBBINS, Promotion, Nov. 1, 1865; Mustered out, &c.

N. S. WHITE, Promotion, Nov. 18, 1865; Mustered out, &c.

First Lieutenants

G. W. DEWHURST (Adjutant), Civil Life, Oct 20, 1862; Resigned, Aug. 31, 1865.

J. M. BINOHAM (Quartermaster), Civil Life, Oct. 20, 1862; Died from effect of exhaustion on a military expedition, July 20, 1863.

G. M. CHAMBERUN (Quartermaster), llth Mass. Battery, Aug. 29, 1863; Mustered out, &c.

GEO. D. WALKER, N. Y. VoL Eng., Oct 13, 1862; Captain, Aug. 11, 1863.

W. H. DANILSON, 48th N. Y., Oct 13, 1862; Captain, July 26, 1863.

J. H. THTBADEAU, 8th Me., Oct 13, 1862; Captain, Jan. 10, 1863.

EPHRAIM P. WHITE, 8th Me., Nov. 14, 1862; Resigned, March 9, 1864.

JAS. POMEROY, 100th Pa., Oct 13,1862; Resigned, Feb. 9, 1863.

JAS. F. JOHNSTON, 100th Pa., Oct 13, 1862; Resigned, March 26, 1863.

JESSE FISHER, 48th N. Y., Oct 13, 1862; Resigned, Jan. 26, 1863.

CHAS. I. DAVIS, 8th Me., Oct 13, 1862; Resigned, Feb. 28, 1863.

WM. STOCKDALE, 8th Me., Oct 13, 1862; Resigned, May 2, 1863.

JAS. B. O'NEIL, Promotion, Jan. 10, 1863; Resigned, May 2, 1863.

W. W. SAMPSON, Promotion, Jan. 10, 1863; Captain, Oct 30,

1863. J. M. THOMPSON, Promotion, Jan. 27, 1863; Captain, Oct. 30,

1863. R. M. GASTON, Promotion, April 15, 1863; Killed at Coosaw Ferry, S. C., May 27, 1863.

JAS. B. WEST, Promotion, Feb. 28, 1863; Resigned, June 14, 1865.

N. G. PARKER, Promotion, May 5, 1863; Captain, Feb., 1865.

W. H. HYDE, Promotion, May 5, 1863; Resigned, April 3, 1865.

HENRY A. STONE, 8th Me., June 26, 1863; Resigned, Dec. 16, 1864.

J. A. TROWBRTDGE, Promotion, Aug. 11, 1863; Resigned, Nov. 29, 1864.

A. W. JACKSON, Promotion, Aug. 26, 1863; Captain, April 30, 1864.

CHAS. E. PARKER, Promotion, Aug. 26, 1863; Resigned, Nov. 29, 1864.

CHAS. W. HOOPER, Promotion, Nov. 8, 1863; Captain, Sept., 1865.

E. C. MERRIAM, Promotion, Nov. 19, 1863; Captain, Sept., 1865.

HENRY A. BEACH, Promotion, April 30, 1864; Resigned, Sept 23, 1864.

E. W. ROBBINS, Promotion, April 30, 1864; Captain, Nov. 1, 1865.

ASA CHILD, Promotion, Sept, 1865; Mastered out, &c.

N. S. WHITE, Promotion, Sept, 1865; Captain, Nov. 18, 1865.

F. S. GOODRICH, Promotion, Oct., 1865; Mustered out, &c.

E. W. HYDE, Promotion, Oct 27, 1865; Mustered out, &c.

HENRY WOOD, Promotion, Nov., 1865; Mustered out, &c.



Second Lieutenants

J. A. TROWBMDGE, N. Y. Vol. Eng., Oct 13, 1862; First Lt, Aug. 11, 1863.

JAS. B. O-NBIL, 1st U. S. Art'y, Oct 13, 1862; First Lt, Jan. 10, 1863.

W. W. SAMPSON, 8th Me., Oct 13, 1862; First Lt, Jan 10, 1863.

J. M. THOMPSON, 7th N. H., Oct 13, 1862; First Lt, Jan. 27, 1863.

R. M. GASTON, 100th Pa., Oct. 13, 1862; First Lt, April 15, 1863.

W. H. HYDE, 6th Ct, Oct 13, 1862; First Lt, May 5, 1863.

JAS. B. WEST, 100th Pa., Oct. 13. 1862; First Lt, Feb. 28, 1863.

HARRY C. WEST, 100th Pa., Oct 13, 1862; Resigned, Nov. 4, 1864.

E. C. MERRIAM, 8th Me., Nov. 17, 1862; First Lt., Nov. 19, 1863.

CHAS. E. PARKER, 8th Me., Nov. 17, 1862; First Lt, Aug. 26, 1863.

C. W. HOOPER, N. Y. Vol. Eng., Feb. 17, 1863; First Lt, April 15, 1863.

N. G. PARKER, 1st Mass. Cavalry, March, 1863; First Lt, May 5, 1863.

A. H. TIRRELL, 1st Mass. Cav., March 6, 1863; Resigned, July 22, 1863.

A. W. JACKSON, 8th Me., March 6, 1863; First Lt, Aug. 26, 1863.

HENRY A. BEACH, 48th N. Y., April 5, 1863; First Lt, April 30, 1864.

E. W. ROBBINS, 8th Me., April 5, 1863; First Lt, April 30, 1864.

A. B. BROWN, Civil Life, April 17, 1863; Resigned, Nov. 27, 1863.

F. M. GOULD, 3d R. I. Battery, June 1, 1863; Resigned, June 8, 1864.

ASA CHILD, 8th Me., Aug. 7, 1863; First Lt, Sept., 1865.

JEROME T. FURMAN, 52d Pa., Aug. 30, 1863; Killed at Walhalla, S. C., Aug. 26, 1865.

JOHN W. SELVAGE, 48th N. Y., Sept 10, 1863; First Lt. 36th U. S. C. T., March, 1865.

MIRAND W. SAXTON, Civil Life, Nov. 19, 1863; Captain 128th U. S. C. T., June 25, 1864 [now Second Lt 38th U. S. Infantry].

NELSON S. WHITE, Dec. 22, 1863; First Lt, Sept., 1865.

EDW. W. HYDE, Civil Life, May 4, 1864; First Lt, Oct. 27, 1865.

F. S. GOODRICH, 115th N. Y., May, 1864; First Lt., Oct., 1865.

B. H. MANNING, Aug. 11, 1864; Capt 128th U. S. C. T., March 17, 1865.

R. M. DAVIS, 4th Mass. Cavalry, Nov. 19, 1864; Capt. 104th U. S. C. T., May 11, 1865.

HENRY WOOD, N. Y. Vol. Eng., Aug., 1865; First Lt, Nov., 1865.

JOHN M. SEAKLES, 1st N. Y. Mounted Rifles, June 15, 1865; Mustered out, &c.



Appendix B The First Black Soldiers

It is well known that the first systematic attempt to organize colored troops during the war of the rebellion was the so-called "Hunter Regiment." The officer originally detailed to recruit for this purpose was Sergeant C. T. Trowbridge, of the New York Volunteer Engineers (Col. Serrell). His detail was dated May 7, 1862, S. O. 84 Dept. South.

Enlistments came in very slowly, and no wonder. The white officers and soldiers were generally opposed to the experiment, and filled the ears of the negroes with the same tales which had been told them by their masters,—that the Yankees really meant to sell them to Cuba, and the like. The mildest threats were that they would be made to work without pay (which turned out to be the case), and that they would be put in the front rank in every battle. Nobody could assure them that they and their families would be freed by the Government, if they fought for it, since no such policy had been adopted. Nevertheless, they gradually enlisted, the most efficient recruiting officer being Sergeant William Bronson, of Company A, in my regiment, who always prided himself on this service, and used to sign himself by the very original title, "No. 1, African Foundations" in commemoration of his deeds.

By patience and tact these obstacles would in time have been overcome. But before long, unfortunately, some of General Hunter's staff became impatient, and induced him to take the position that the blacks must enlist. Accordingly, squads of soldiers were sent to seize all the able-bodied men on certain plantations, and bring them to the camp. The immediate consequence was a renewal of the old suspicion, ending in a widespread belief that they were to be sent to Cuba, as their masters had predicted. The ultimate result was a habit of distrust, discontent, and desertion, that it was almost impossible to surmount. All the men who knew anything about General Hunter believed in him; but they all knew that there were bad influences around him, and that the Government had repudiated his promises. They had been kept four months in service, and then had been dismissed without pay. That having been the case, why should not the Government equally repudiate General Saxton's promises or mine? As a matter of fact, the Government did repudiate these pledges for years, though we had its own written authority to give them. But that matter needs an appendix by itself.

The "Hunter Regiment" remained in camp on Hilton Head Island until the beginning of August, 1862, kept constantly under drill, but much demoralized by desertion. It was then disbanded, except one company. That company, under command of Sergeant Trowbridge, then acting as Captain, but not commissioned, was kept in service, and was sent (August 5, 1862) to garrison St. Simon's Island, on the coast of Georgia. On this island (made famous by Mrs. Kemble's description) there were then five hundred colored people, and not a single white man.

The black soldiers were sent down on the Ben De Ford, Captain Hallett. On arriving, Trowbridge was at once informed by Commodore Goldsborough, naval commander at that station, that there was a party of rebel guerillas on the island, and was asked whether he would trust his soldiers in pursuit of them. Trowbridge gladly assented; and the Commodore added, "If you should capture them, it will be a great thing for you."

They accordingly went on shore, and found that the colored men of the island had already undertaken the enterprise. Twenty-five of them had armed themselves, under the command of one of their own number, whose name was John Brown. The second in command was Edward Gould, who was afterwards a corporal in my own regiment The rebel party retreated before these men, and drew them into a swamp. There was but one path, and the negroes entered single file. The rebels lay behind a great log, and fired upon them. John Brown, the leader, fell dead within six feet of the log,—probably the first black man who fell under arms in the war,—several other were wounded, and the band of raw recruits retreated; as did also the rebels, in the opposite direction. This was the first armed encounter, so far as I know, between the rebels and their former slaves; and it is worth noticing that the attempt was a spontaneous thing and not accompanied by any white man. The men were not soldiers, nor in uniform, though some of them afterwards enlisted in Trowbridge's company.

The father of this John Brown was afterwards a soldier in my regiment; and, after his discharge for old age, was, for a time, my servant. "Uncle York," as we called him, was as good a specimen of a saint as I have ever met, and was quite the equal of Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom." He was a fine-looking old man, with dignified and courtly manners, and his gray head was a perfect benediction, as he sat with us on the platform at our Sunday meetings. He fully believed, to his dying day, that the "John Brown Song" related to his son, and to him only.

Trowbridge, after landing on the island, hunted the rebels all day with his colored soldiers, and a posse of sailors. In one place, he found by a creek a canoe, with a tar-kettle, and a fire burning; and it was afterwards discovered that, at that very moment, the guerillas were hid in a dense palmetto thicket, near by, and so eluded pursuit The rebel leader was one Miles Hazard, who had a plantation on the island, and the party escaped at last through the aid of his old slave, Henry, who found them a boat One of my sergeants, Clarence Kennon, who had not then escaped from slavery, was present when they reached the main-land; and he described them as being tattered and dirty from head to foot, after their efforts to escape their pursuers.

When the troops under my command occupied Jacksonville, Fla., in March of the following year, we found at the railroad station, packed for departure, a box of papers, some of them valuable. Among them was a letter from this very Hazard to some friend, describing the perils of that adventure, and saying, "If you wish to know hell before your time, go to St Simon's and be hunted ten days by niggers."

I have heard Trowbridge say that not one of his men flinched; and they seemed to take delight in the pursuit, though the weather was very hot, and it was fearfully exhausting.

This was early in August; and the company remained two months at St Simon's, doing picket duty within hearing of the rebel drums, though not another scout ever ventured on the island, to their knowledge. Every Saturday Trowbridge summoned the island people to drill with his soldiers; and they came in hordes, men, women, and children, in every imaginable garb, to the number of one hundred and fifty or two hundred.

His own men were poorly clothed and hardly shod at all; and, as no new supply of uniform was provided, they grew more and more ragged. They got poor rations, and no pay; but they kept up their spirits. Every week or so some of them would go on scouting excursions to the main-land; one scout used to go regularly to his old mother's hut, and keep himself hid under her bed, while she collected for him all the latest news of rebel movements. This man never came back without bringing recruits with him.

At last the news came that Major-General Mitchell had come to relieve General Hunter, and that Brigadier-General Saxton had gone North; and Trowbridge went to Hilton Head in some anxiety to see if he and his men were utterly forgotten. He prepared a report, showing the services and claims of his men, and took it with him. This was early in October, 1862. The first person he met was Brigadier-General Saxton, who informed him that he had authority to organize five thousand colored troops, and that he (Trowbridge) should be senior captain of the first regiment

This was accordingly done; and Company A of the First South Carolina could honestly claim to date its enlistment back to May, 1862, although they never got pay for that period of their service, and their date of muster was November, IS, 1862.

The above facts were written down from the narration of Lieutenant-Colonel Trowbridge, who may justly claim to have been the first white officer to recruit and command colored troops in this war. He was constantly in command of them from May 9, 1862, to February 9, 1866.

Except the Louisiana soldiers mentioned in the Introduction,—of whom no detailed reports have, I think, been published,—my regiment was unquestionably the first mustered into the service of the United States; the first company muster bearing date, November 7, 1862, and the others following in quick succession.

The second regiment in order of muster was the "First Kansas Colored," dating from January 13, 1863. The first enlistment in the Kansas regiment goes back to August 6, 1862; while the earliest technical date of enlistment in my regiment was October 19, 1862, although, as was stated above, one company really dated its organization back to May, 1862. My muster as colonel dates back to November 10, 1862, several months earlier than any other of which I am aware, among colored regiments, except that of Colonel Stafford (First Louisiana Native Guards), September 27, 1862. Colonel Williams, of the "First Kansas Colored," was mustered as lieutenant-colonel on January 13, 1863; as colonel, March 8, 1863. These dates I have (with the other facts relating to the regiment) from Colonel R. J. Hinton, the first officer detailed to recruit it.

To sum up the above facts: my late regiment had unquestioned priority in muster over all but the Louisiana regiments. It had priority over those in the actual organization and term of service of one company. On the other hand, the Kansas regiment had the priority in average date of enlistment, according to the muster-rolls.

The first detachment of the Second South Carolina Volunteers (Colonel Montgomery) went into camp at Port Royal Island, February 23, 1863, numbering one hundred and twenty men. I do not know the date of his muster; it was somewhat delayed, but was probably dated back to about that time.

Recruiting for the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts (colored) began on February 9, 1863, and the first squad went into camp at Readville, Massachusetts, on February 21, 1863, numbering twenty-five men. Colonel Shaw's commission (and probably his muster) was dated April 17, 1863. (Report of Adjutant-General of Massachusetts for 1863, pp. 896-899.)