chapter 1 of army life in a black regiment this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by FNH army life in a black regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson 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 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 belong 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 free man 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 a military seniority till later see the appendix these were the only colored regiments recruited during the year 1862 the second south carolina and the 54th 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 leftenants john goodall and luther bigelow in the barracks of the 51st massachusetts colonel sprague when the following letter was put into my hands bowfort sc 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 arsakston brigadier general military government had an invitation reached me to take command of a regiment of kalmok 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 saxons 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 saxon might yet be thwarted in these efforts by the pro-slavery influence that had still so much weight at headquarters it would be 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 saxon 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 the massachusetts commission thenceforth my lot was cast all together 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 the 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 a 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 many odd and novel aspects of the new experience camp life was a wonderful strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers a mine lay among 800 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 the camp life and throw the later experience into another form indeed that matter takes care of itself diaries and letter writing stop when the 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 we'll 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 acamp 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 all innovations and the whole demeanor of this particular regiment was watched with microscopic scrutiny by friends and foes i felt something as if we were a plant trying to take root but constantly pulled up to see if we were growing the slightest camp incident somehow made it back to us magnified and distorted in the 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 all been over with us the party of distrust would have got the upper hand and they might not have been during the whole contest another effort to arm the negro i may now proceed without further preparation to the diary end of chapter one recording by fnh remember to visit www.bookranger.co.uk chapter two of army life in a black regiment this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by fnh army life in a black regiment by thomas wentworth higginson chapter two camp diary camp saxton near bow fort sc 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 lighthouse 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 boats stopped and when i came on deck before six the watchlights glittered on the land the ship lights on the sea hilton head lay on one side the gun boats on the other all that was raw and bare in the low buildings of the new settlement were softened into picturesqueness by the early light stars were still overhead gulls wheeled and shrieked and the broad river rippled duskily towards bow fort the shores were low and wooded like any new england shore there were a few gun boats 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 bow fort on the flood tide this morning it seemed almost as fair as the smooth and lovely canals which stedman traversed to meet the his negro soldiers in suriname 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 shrub whose pale seed vessels look 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 further brought us to the pretty town of bow fort 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 mustard into the united states service they were unarmed and all looked as thoroughly black as the most faithful philanthropist could desire they 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 they had been a turkey i saw them mustard general saxton talked to them a little in his direct manly way they gave close attention though their faces looked impenetrable then i converse with some of them the first to whom i spoke had been wounded in a small expedition after lumber after 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'd been a tinking massa dots just 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 in a new mode of life so thoroughly that they seem three years scarcely pausing in new york or in bow fort there seems to have been for me but one step from the camp of massachusetts regiment to this and that step over leagues of waves it is a holiday wherever general saxon'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 moths like fringe trees struck with grainers below the sandy soil scantily 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 all 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 unsouthern 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 oneself 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 countenance is so black that i can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not black is on 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 the reins in this process one deals chiefly with the officers and i have as yet had 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'm beginning to decipher the individual parts at first of course they all looked just alike the variety comes afterwards and they had just as distinguishable that 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 which way like average militia training is a doubtful advantage i noticed that some companies too look darker than others though all are purer african than i expected this is said to be a 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 residium 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 imitation which for the purposes of drill counterbalances any defect of mental training to learn the drill one does not want to have a set of college professors one wants a squad of eager active pliant schoolboys 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 the 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 from their right are more grave and sedate while under instruction the extremes of their jollity and sobriety being greater with them are less liable to be intermingled these companies can be driven with a looser rain than my former one for they restrain themselves but the moment they are dismissed from drill every tongue is relaxed every ivory tooth visible this morning i wondered about where the different companies were target shooting and their glee was contagious such exulting shouts of kai oh man when some steady old turkey shooter brought his gun down for an instant same and then unairingly 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 and over on the grass such dances of ecstasy has made the ethiopian minstrel sea of the stage appear a feeble imitation evening better still was a scene on which i stumbled tonight strolling in the cool moonlight i was attracted by brilliant light beneath the trees and cautiously approached it a circle of 30 or 40 soldiers sat around a roaring fire while one old uncle kato by name was narrating an intermingled 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 the 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 then i go up to the white man very humble and say would he please give old man a mouthful for eat he say he must have devaluation or half a dollar then i look very sorry and turn for go away then he say i might give him that hatchet i had then i say this in a tragic vein that i must have de hatchet for defend myself from the dogs immense applause and one appreciating auditor says chuckling that was your arms old man which brings the house down again then he say de yankee pickets was nearby and i must be very keyful then i say good lord masa amday 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 fluid him how the whole household black and white rose in pursuit how he scrambled under a hedge and over high fence etc all in a style of which goff alone among orators can give the faintest impression so thoroughly a dramatized was every syllable then he described his reaching the riverside at last and trying to decide where those certain vessels held friends or foes then i see guns on board and sure certain he union boat and i pop my head up then i've been a tink sashki had gums too and my head go down again then i hide in the bush till morning then i open my bundle and take all white shut and tie him on all pole and wave him and every time do win blow i've been a tremble and down in dibushes because being between two fires he doubted whether friend or foe would see his signal first and so on with the succession of tricks beyond molly air of acts of cautions foresight patient cunning which will listen 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 tumultous glee overhead the mighty limbs of a great live oak with the weird moss weighing in the smoke and the high moon gleaming faintly through yet tomorrow 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 hoad lazily in a cotton field as a being the light of whose brain had huddly gone out and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave of black beetles and finding them engage with green room and footlights in enacting poor pillow coddy 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 revenants to the wires of the ancient eulises 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 kato thou reasonest well when i get into the serious scrape in an enemy's country may i be lucky enough to have you at my elbow to pull me out of it the men seem to have enjoyed the novel event of thanksgiving day they have had company and regimental prize shootings a minimum of speeches and a maximum of dinner bill of fare two beef cattle and a thousand oranges the oranges cost a centerpiece and the cattle was sersh bestowed by general saxby as they call him december 1st 1862 how observed is the impression bequeathed by slavery in regard to these southern blacks that they are sluggish and inefficient in labor last night after hard day's work our guns and the remainder of our tents being just issued an order came from bowfort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards being some of those captured by men 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 and then across the slimy beach at low tide and then up a steep bank and all in one great uproar of merriment for two hours running most of the time chattering all of the time snatching the boards from each other's backs as if they were some coveted treasure getting up eagle rivalries between the 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 promise reward for simply is the most natural way of doing the thing the steamboat captain declared that they had 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 opotum telling him that he ought to be asleep after such a job of work he answered with the broadest grin oh no gunl does no work at all gunl dat only just enough for stretch we december 2nd 1862 i believe i have not yet enumerated the probable drawbacks to the success of this regiment if any we're exposed to no direct annoyance from the white regiments being out of their way and we have not 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 as they're sharing 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 air 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 refuse to enlist have a great influence in deterring the others our soldiers are constantly twittered 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 18 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 her being employed on active service at all all these considerations they feel precisely as white men would no less no more and it is comparative freedom from such unfavorable influences which make the florida men seem more bold and manly as they undoubtedly do today general saxton has returned from finandina with 76 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 i lead it is dark mild drizzling evening and as the foggy air breathed sand flies so it calls out melodies and stranger antics from the 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 kid there plover flit and whale 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 which obscure syllables recurring constantly and slide variations into woven all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and clapping of their 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 someone in the center 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 in livens are seen the circle enlarges louder grows the singing rousing shouts of encouragement come in half baccalaunian half devout wake and brother stand up to and brother 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 is 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. zakos 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've 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 out a guard house sooner than these men if camp regulations are violated it seems to be usually through heedlessness they love passionately three things besides their spiritual incantations namely sugar home and tobacco this last affection brings tears to their eyes almost when they speak of their urgent need of pay they speak of their last remembered quid as if it was 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 trickery is too diminished 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 offenses of members of one's own company which is so troublesome among the white soldiers nor are they lazy either about work or drill in all respects they seem better material for soldiers than i 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 for only a fortnight and a part of only two days they have all been slaves and very few are even moletos december 4th 1862 dwelling in tents with abraham isaac and jacob this condition is certainly mine and with the multitude of patriarchs beside not to mention caesar and pompay hercules and backers a moving life tented at night this experience has been mine in civil society if society be civil before the luxurious forest fires of main and the andirindak 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 barric life at camp will 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 effectively excluding dampness and drafts 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 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 bow i sit on it with a pride of conscious invention mitigated by profound insecurity bedroom furniture a couch made of gumboxes covered with condemned blankets another settee two pounds and a tin cup a tin basin we prize any tin or wooden wear 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 today 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 whale of the hovering plover sometimes a face black or white pierced through the entrance with some message since the light readily penetrates though the rain cannot the tent conveys a feeling of charm security as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering drops and held the moaning wind the front end 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 a mem pass and reparse a chattering throng a think of emerson's sardine as thou sitst 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 bored in different messes the adjutant and i still cling into the household of william washington william the quiet and 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 ladylike little spouse headie a pair of wedded lovers if ever i saw one set out our table in their one room halfway between an unglazed window and a large wood fire such is often welcome thanks to the adjutant we are provided with the social magnificence of napkins while less pride take too high a flight our tablecloth consists of two new york tribunes and a leslie's pictorial every steamer brings us a clean tablecloth here we are forever supplied with pork and oysters and sweet potatoes and rice and homely and cornbread and milk also mysterious griddle cakes of corn and pumpkin also preserves made of pumpkin chips another 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 some underdeveloped condition of anti-natal toughness after the meal he frankly avowed it for a squirrel december 5th 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 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 oh my father is gone my father is gone my father is gone into heaven my lord i can't stay behind there's room enough room enough room enough into heaven for disulger 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 cookhouse i 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 give another song boys and i'll give you a speech after some hesitation and sundry shouts of rise desing somebody and stand up for jesus brother irreverently put in by juveniles they got upon the john brown song always a favorite adding a jubilant verse which i'd never heard before we'll beat bow regard on declare battlefield then came the promise speech and then no less than seven other speeches by as many men on a variety of barrels each orator being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his special constituency each 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 lamkin just arrived from ferdinina 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 freemont'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 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 masses they have lived under the flag they got their wealth under it and everything beautiful for their children under it they have grinded us up and put in their pocket for money but the first minute they think that old flag mean freedom for we colored people and run up the flag of their own immense applause but we'll never desert the old flag boys never we have lived under it for 1862 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 their officers give them in an empty barrel for a stump and they will do their own exaltation december 11 1862 haroon alrushid wandering in disguise through his imperial streets scarcely happened upon a greater variety of groups than i in my evening strolls among our own campfires 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 their beloved tobacco beside others telling stories and shouting with laughter over the broadest mimicry in which they excel and in which their officers come in full share the everlasting shout is always within hearing and its mixture of piety and poker and its castanet like clapping of the hands there are quieter prayer meetings with pious invocations and slow psalms deconed out from memory by the leader two lines at a time in a sort of wailing chant elsewhere there are conversation around fires with a woman for queen of the circle anubian face gay headdress guilt 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 the 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 delay the oba 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 tonight for the first time i have heard a harang in a different strain quite saucy skeptical and defiant appealing to them in a sort of french materialistic style and claiming some personal experience of warfare you don't know nothing about it boys you think you's brave enough how you think if you stand clear in the open field here's you and da desa sesh you's got to have the right ting inside of you you must have it served in you like these yersauer plums they serve in the barrel you's got to harden it down inside of you or it's nothing then he hit it hard at the religionists when a man's got the spirit of the lord in him it weakens him all out can't hold the corn he had a great deal of broad sense in his speech but presently some of the others began praying vociferously close by as if to drown this free thinker when at last he exclaimed i mean to fight the war through and die a good soldier with the last kick that's my prayer and suddenly jumped off the barrel i was quite interested at discovering this reverse side of the temperament the devotional side predominates 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 pyistic 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 14th passages from prayers in the camp let me so live that when i die i shall have manners that i shall know what to say when i see my heavenly lord let me live with the musket in one hand and the bible in the other that if i die at the muzzle of the musket die in the water die on the land i may know i have the breasted jesus in my hand and have no fear i have left my wife in the land a bondage my little ones they say every night why rid my father but when i die when the breasted morning rises when i shall stand in de glorie with one foot on de water and one foot on de land then oh lord i shall see my wife and my little chilen once more these sentences i noted down as best i could beside the glimmering campfire last night the same person was the hero of a singular little contra tem at a funeral in the afternoon it was our first funeral the man had died in the 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 in 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 in toning the text as if it were the first verse of another hymn so calmly was it done so imperturbable were all the black countenances that i half began to conjecture that the chaplain himself intended it for a hymn though i could imagine no prospective rhyme for trouble unless it were approximated by debil 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 waved all further recitive 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 pecancy in their hands though strict accuracy may suffer thus one of my captains last sunday heard a colored ex orter of bowfort proclaim paul may plant and may polish with 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 bowfort and would i lend him a dollar and seventy five cents to buy a 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 16th today a young recruit appeared here who had been the slave of colonel samis 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 and i told him that i'd 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 other 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 50 at least with brown eyes and reddish hair who is said to be the son of one of our comodores i've seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair or fairer among the 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 lower state 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 the well-bred slaveholders they have meekly accepted it want to go out to denigra houses sa is the universal impulse of sociability when they wished to cross the lines he have 20 house servants and 200 head a nigger is still a more degrading form of phrase in which the epiphetes limited to 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 do white man over 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 polish manners can wind them round his little finger while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness the demeanour 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 of the north the dandy barba strut this is an agreeable surprise for i feared that freedom and regimentals were produced 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 the camp that i have ever heard and i feared some riot ongoing 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 gunl sir you have no objection to we playing sir 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 cunnell wish you had let we play a little longer sir still i was not sorry on the whole for these sham fights between the 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 immativeness and docility and the pride they take in the service one captain said to me today 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 left tenants an englishman taught a part of his company the essential movements of the school of 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 the 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 their facility with which they do things i expect in much harder work in this respect the habit of carrying burdens on the head gives them a reckness of figure even where physically disabled i have seen a woman with a brewing water pail balanced on her head or perhaps a cup saucer and spoons stop suddenly turn around 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 a not look to a well-dressed young lady on sunday but one often sees that spectacle the passion for tobacco among our men continues quite absorbingly and i have piteous appeals for some arrangement by which they can buy it on credit as we have yet no subtler they're imploring cunnell we can't live without it sir goes to my heart and as they cannot read i cannot even have the melancholy satisfaction of supplying them with the excellent anti-tobacco tracks of mr. Trask december 19th last night the water froze in the adjutant's tent but not in mine today 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 natural habit for a short lived coolness of an outdoor 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 un-eatable bitter oranges which dex my tentpole i have today hung up a long bow of finger sponge which floated to the riverbank as winter advances butterflies gradually disappear one species a vasanesa 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've 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 20th phyllo progenitiveness 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 sir defuse april prolong the privilege of childhood i am perplexed nightly for counter signs their range of proper names is so distrissingly limited that 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 counter sign yet and was indignantly answered should tinker i have them have them for a fortnight which seems a long epoch for that magic word to hold out tonight i thought i would have fredericksburg in honor of bernside's reported victory using the rumor quickly for fear of contradiction later incomes a captain gets the counter sign for his own use but presently returns the sentinel having pronounced it incorrect on inquiry it appears the sergeant of the guard being weak in geography thought best to substitute the more familiar word crockery where which was with perfect gravity confided to all sentinels and accepted without question oh life what is the fun of fiction beside thee i should think they would suffer and complain these cold nights but they say nothing and 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 infitesimal flame with one soldier standing by it looks quite like a respectable conflagration and it seems as if a group of them must dispel dampness December 21st to a regimental commander no book can be so fascinating as the consolidated morning report which is ready about nine and tells how many of 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 tonight the officers are rather depressed by rumors of burn sides being defeated after all i am fortunately equitable and undepressable 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 sackston and me de general and de gunnell 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 burn side is defeated or succeeds christmas day we'll fight for liberty till the lord shall call us home we'll soon be free till the lord shall call us home this is the hymn which the slaves at georgetown south carolina were whipped for singing when president lingham was elected so said a little drummer boy as he sat at my tense edge last night and told me his story and he showed all his white teeth as he added they think the lord meant for say the yankees last night at dress parade the adjutant read general sackston'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 years coming after we could have no adequate program for today 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 walked 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 26th 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 sackston is not to be removed as had been reported two different stands of colors have arrived for us and will be presented at new years 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 musterine 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 oh lord when i think of this christmas and last year de christmas last christmas he and and nothing to eat but grits and no salt in them this 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 29th a new surgeon has begun his work most efficiently he and the chaplain have converted an old gin house into a comfortable hospital with 10 nice beds and straw pallets he is now with a hearty professional faith looking round for somebody to put into it i'm afraid the regiment will accommodate him for although he declares that these men do not sham sickness as he expected their guitar 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 the pageant are the coloured race tough is my present anxiety and is it odd that physical insufficiency the only discouragement not thrown in our way by the newspapers is the only discouragement which fills any place in our minds they're used to sleeping indoors in winter heard it before fires and so they feel the change still the regiment is as healthy as the average and experience will teach us something note a second winter's experience removed all of this solicitude for they learn to take care of themselves during the first february the sick list averaged about 90 during the second about 30 this being the worst month in the year for the blacks December 30th on the first of january we are to have a slight collation 10 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 24 we shall happily have enough to try all graduations 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 whatever are we to do for spoons and forks and plates each soldier has his own and is sternly held responsible for it by the army regulations but how provide for the multitude is it customary I ask you to help tender loin with one's fingers fortunately the mayor is to see to that department greater the advantages of military discipline for anything perplexing detail is subordinate new year's eve my housekeeping at home is not perhaps on any very extravagant scale buying beef steak 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 10 and keep three to be fatted fatted quother not one of the beasts at present appears to possess an ounce of superfluous flesh never was seen such lean kind 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 try to imagine that I like the Homeric repast and certainly the whole thing had 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 10 beaves would feed as many as a million people it has such a stupendous sound but general Saksden predicts a small social party of five thousand and we fear that the meat will run short unless they prefer bone one of the cattle is so small we're hoping it may turn out veal for drink we aim at the simple luxury of molasses and water a barrel per company 10 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 quarter 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 emitted from the list of vices I have never heard of a glass of liquor in the camp nor of any effort 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 elayed like that of the mother for her children but I've never heard whiskey even wished for save on christmas day and then only by one man and he spoke with the hopeless ideal sighing as one alludes to that golden age I'm amazed at this total emission 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 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 1st 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 smoldering in the pit and the bees 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 today was from one of the most stylish sergeants who approached me with the following little speech evidently the result of some elaboration I think myself happy this new year's day for salute my own cunnel this day last year I was a servant to a gun lobber cishesh but now I have deprivileged for my salute my own cunnel that officer with the utmost sincerity reciprocated the sentiment about 10 o'clock the people began to collect by land and also by water in steamers sent by general sacks done for the purpose and from that time all the avenues of approach were thronged the multitude were chiefly coloured women with gay handkerchiefs on their heads and a sprinkling of men with that peculiar 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 cavalrymen our companies were marched to the neighborhood of the plantation 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 main 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 carolin and addressing south carolinans 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 reverend mr french a chaplain who brought them from the donors in new york all this was according to the program 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 eclectic 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 it were by their own hearth 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 frances d gauge spoke very sensibly to the women and judge stickney from florida added something and then some gentlemen 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 seem to have a very gay time most of the visitors had far to go and so dispersed before the 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 a high tide it was shouted across the pickets above a way in which we often receive news but not always trustworthy january 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 mockingbirds and crickets and rose buds and occasional noonday baths in the river though the butterflies have vanished as i remember to have observed in fail 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 aisles 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 kato was plate oh 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 cunnell said a faltering swarm the other day i want to 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 was a good match oh yes cunnell he said in all the cordality of friendship john's guine for marie 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 aisles of greece again january 7th 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 guardhouse 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 are customs as they have been to the most violent passions on the part of the 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 kindnesses for indulgence or 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 must 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 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 himself 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 the moon behind it and we had only the light of the pine splinters as the procession wound 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 bows 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 bollies were fired above the graves just before the coffins were lowered an old man whispered to me that i must have their position altered the heads must be towards the west so it was done though they are in a place so veiled in woods that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them we have now a good regimental hospital admirably arranged in a deserted gin house a fine well of our own digging within the camp lines a full allowance of tents all flawed 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 declare 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 30 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 490 to 740 besides a hundred recruits now waiting at st augustine and we have practiced 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 bow fort 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 occlusion till it occurred to me as a strange and novel phenomenon that the soldiers at the other camps were white january 8th this morning i went to bow fort 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 the 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 labour to bring them into any uniformity in their drill there is no need for 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 should 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 most perfectly a battalion is drilled on the parade ground the more quietly it can be handled in action moreover the great need of uniformity in 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 today for amidst all the rattling and noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry there was only one infantry movement that we had not practiced and that was done by only one regiment and apparently considered quite a novelty though it is easily taught forming square by case's method forward on center 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 but 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 the like qualities system promptness patience tack 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 arrive 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 hungry 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 adaptness of the freed slaves for drill and discipline is now thoroughly demonstrated and must soon be universally acknowledged but it will 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 the emancipation and the next day it was read to the men the words themselves did not stir them very much because they have often been 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 guarantee 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 the quarters calling him coward i was glad of their exhibition of feeling though it is very possible that 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 ascent 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 an entire faith in them as soldiers without it all their religious demonstration would be mere sentimentality for instance everyone who visits the camp is struck with their bearing ascentinals 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 it is a wonder i escaped with life and limb such a charging of bayonets and clicking of gunlocks sometimes i tempted them by refusing to give any counter sign but offering them a piece of tobacco which they could not accept without allowing me nearer than the prescribed bayonets distance tobacco is more than gold to them he was touching to watch the struggle in their minds but they always did their duty at the 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 the 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 the 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 in 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 counter sign to the challenging sentinel undertook to pass within the lines halt exclaimed the dusky man and brother bringing down his bayonet the counter sign not correct 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 christie's minstrels to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the ethiope vocal chords halt da counter sign not correct 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 i was 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 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 they're flashed into my mind with more enjoyment in 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 bedtime 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 minus 10 degrees with a heavy window sash 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 ought to yield my incognito corporal of the guard he shouted lustly 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 broke the silence who am that he asked in a stage whisper am he a buckra white man don't know whether he'd been a buck or not responded doggedly my cerebus in uniform but i was bound to keep him here till the corporal of the 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 shouldn't approach them in the darkness and storm they will take him for decunnel and treat him with special severity january 13th in many ways the childish nature of these people shows itself i've 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 berry grieve this evening cunnel pairs like we couldn't bear it to lose decapen and did lieutenant all together 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 officer should not be savage to we which was the one thing they deprecated i assaged their woes 24 hours have passed and i hear them singing most merrily all down the 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 cunnel saxter 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-fulfillment 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 a system so that their intermediate 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 colour troops is to gain their confidence but it is especially true though many persons do not appreciate it that yet admirable methods and properties of the regular army are equally available for all troops and that the sublimist 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 the giving of physical pain if they are cruel to animals for instance it always reminds me of the children pulling off flies legs in a sort of pitiless untought experimental way yet i could 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 and resigned this is very evident in the hospital there is nothing of the restless defined 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 poor 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 and daring they could easily be made fanatics if i chose but i do not choose their whole mood is essentially mohammedian 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 cooperation their philosophizing is often the highest form of mysticism and our dear surgeon declares that they are all natural transcendentalists the white camp seemed 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 of the elder creed it is time for rest and i've just looked out into the night where the eternal star shut down in concave protection over the yet glimmering camp and a ryan 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 like wake dirge in the scottish border minstrelsy i know moonrise i know star rise lay this body down i walk in the moonlight i walk in the starlight to lay this body down i'll walk in the graveyard i'll walk through the graveyard to lay this body down i'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms lay this body down i go to judgment in the evening of d-day when i lay this body down and my soul and your soul will meet in d-day when i lay this body down january 14th in speaking of the military qualities of the blacks i should add that the only point where i am disappointed is one i've 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 try to observe them when bathing such splendid muscular development set off by that smooth coating of apidose tissue which makes them like the south sea islanders appear even more muscular than they are their skins are also of a finer grain than those of whites the surgeon say and certainly are smoother and far more free from hair but their weakness is pulmonary pneumonia and pleurisy are their besetting ailments and 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 a more highly civilized race 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 in its ways these traits have often been illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters for instance i dispatch 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 bow fort in which capacity he once drove bow fort 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 in 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 patomac 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 fit high perfectly proportioned and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity his gait is like a panthers i never saw such a tread no anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability he makes to saint perfectly intelligible and if there should ever be a black monarchy in south carolina he will be its king january 15th 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 blank is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of a surgeon of a new york regiment just from key west who had over 200 cases of the fever i suppose he is a skillful highly educated man said i yes he responded with enthusiasm why he had 70 deaths as if that proved his superiority past question january 19th and first sitting proud as a lung on his throne at the head of them all rode sir richard tyrone but i fancy sir richard felt not much better satisfied with his following than i today jrl once said that nothing was quite as 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 today for the first time i marched the whole regiment through bow fort and back the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage they did march splendidly this all admit em's prediction was fulfilled well not blank being bliss a thousand men every one of them as black as coal i confess it to look back on 20 broad double ranks of men for they march by platoons every polished musket having a black face beside it and every face sets steadily to the front a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future it was something to remember and when they return through the same streets marching by the flank with guns at the support and each man covering his file leader handsomely the effect on the eye was almost as fine the band of the eighth main joined us at the entrance of the town and escorted us in sergeant rivers said aesthetically afterwards in describing the affair and when that band wheeling before us a march on my god i quit this world altogether i wonder if he pictured himself the many dusky regiments now uniformed which i seem 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 in front every man and they did it with their accustomed fidelity aided by the sort of spontaneous eye for effect which is all in their melodramatic natures one of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards we didn't look to deright nor to the left i didn't see nothing in Beaufort every step was worth 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 of trivial exceptions those spectators behaved in a manly and courteous manner and i did 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 officers debunker soldiers look like a man who been a stealer 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 amourably true to our experience that it seems as if written by one of us i am confident that there has never been in any american newspaper a treatment of the subject so discriminating and so wise january 21st today 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 of 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 50 000 of them general Saxton spoke to them afterwards and said that 50 000 muskets were on their way for coloured 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 bow fort i suppose i felt like some anxious mama 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 more over he is 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 40 pounds will marry me quote mother goose 40 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 coloured troops but it is well to remember in advance that military success is really less satisfactory than any other because it may depend on a moment's turn of events and that may be determined by some trivial thing neither to be anticipated nor controlled napoleon ought to have won at waterloo by all reasonable calculations but who cares all that one can expect is to do one's best and to take with equanimity the fortune of war end of chapter two recording by fnh visit www.bookranger.co.uk