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Army Life in a Black Regiment

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Army Life
in a
Black Regiment


Thomas Wentworth Higginson
(1823-1911)


Originally published 1869
Reprinted, 1900, by Riverside Press



CONTENTS


CHAPTER 1 Introductory

CHAPTER 2 Camp Diary

CHAPTER 3 Up the St. Mary's

CHAPTER 4 Up the St. John's

CHAPTER 5 Out on Picket

CHAPTER 6 A Night in the Water

CHAPTER 7 Up the Edisto

CHAPTER 8 The Baby of the Regiment

CHAPTER 9 Negro Spirituals

CHAPTER 10 Life at Camp Shaw

CHAPTER 11 Florida Again?

CHAPTER 12 The Negro as a Soldier

CHAPTER 13 Conclusion

APPENDIX

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

Index




Chapter 1
Introductory


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

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

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

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

MY DEAR SIR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter 2
Camp Diary


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His answer came promptly and stoutly,

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

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


November 27, 1862.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


December 1, 1862.

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


December 2, 1862.

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

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