Army Life in a Black Regiment
by
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Part 1 out of 5
This eBook was provided 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 itl
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 then"
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 specal 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 propsective 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 lowerd, 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 guardl" 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, then- 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 satisfatory 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
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