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Army Life in a Black Regiment

T >> Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Army Life in a Black Regiment




Jacksonville had also seasoned the men so well that they were no
longer nervous, and did not waste much powder on false alarms. The
Rebels made no formal attacks, and rarely attempted to capture
pickets. Sometimes they came stealing through the creeks in "dugouts,"
as we did on their side of the water, and occasionally an officer of
ours was fired upon while making his rounds by night. Often some boat
or scow would go adrift, and sometimes a mere dark mass of river-weed
would be floated by the tide past the successive stations, eliciting a
challenge and perhaps a shot from each. I remember the vivid way in
which one of the men stated to his officer the manner in which a
faithful picket should do his duty, after challenging, in case a boat
came in sight. "Fus' ting I shoot, and den I shoot, and den I shoot
again. Den I creep-creep up near de boat, and see who dey in 'em; and
s'pose anybody pop up he head, den I shoot again. S'pose I fire my
forty rounds. I tink he hear at de camp and send more mans,"--which
seemed a reasonable presumption. This soldier's name was Paul Jones, a
daring fellow, quite worthy of his namesake.

In time, however, they learned quieter methods, and would wade far out
in the water, there standing motionless at last, hoping to surround and
capture these floating boats, though, to their great disappointment, the
prize usually proved empty. On one occasion they tried a still
profounder strategy; for an officer visiting the pickets after midnight,
and hearing in the stillness a portentous snore from the end of the
causeway (our most important station), straightway hurried to the point
of danger, with wrath in his soul. But the sergeant of the squad came
out to meet him, imploring silence, and explaining that they had seen or
suspected a boat hovering near, and were feigning sleep in order to lure
and capture those who would entrap them.

The one military performance at the picket station of which my men were
utterly intolerant was an occasional flag of truce, for which this was
the appointed locality. These farces, for which it was our duty to
furnish the stock actors, always struck them as being utterly
despicable, and unworthy the serious business of war. They felt, I
suppose, what Mr. Pickwick felt, when he heard his counsel remark to the
counsel for the plaintiff, that it was a very fine morning. It goaded
their souls to see the young officers from the two opposing armies
salute each other courteously, and interchange cigars. They despised the
object of such negotiations, which was usually to send over to the enemy
some family of Rebel women who had made themselves quite intolerable on
our side, but were not above collecting a subscription among the Union
officers, before departure, to replenish their wardrobes. The men never
showed disrespect to these women by word or deed, but they hated them
from the bottom of their souls. Besides, there was a grievance behind
all this.

The Rebel order remained unrevoked which consigned the new colored
troops and their officers to a felon's death, if captured; and we all
felt that we fought with ropes round our necks. "Dere's no flags ob
truce for us," the men would contemptuously say. "When de Secesh fight
de _Fus' Souf_" (First South Carolina), "he fight in earnest." Indeed, I
myself took it as rather a compliment when the commander on the other
side--though an old acquaintance of mine in Massachusetts and in
Kansas--at first refused to negotiate through me or my officers,--a
refusal which was kept up, greatly to the enemy's inconvenience, until
our men finally captured some of the opposing pickets, and their friends
had to waive all scruples in order to send them supplies. After this
there was no trouble, and I think that the first Rebel officer in South
Carolina who officially met any officer of colored troops under a flag
of truce was Captain John C. Calhoun. In Florida we had been so
recognized long before; but that was when they wished to frighten us out
of Jacksonville.

Such was our life on picket at Port Royal,--a thing whose memory is now
fast melting into such stuff as dreams are made of. We stayed there more
than two months at that tune; the first attack on Charleston exploded
with one puff, and had its end; General Hunter was ordered North, and
the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead; and in June, when the
blackberries were all eaten, we were summoned, nothing loath, to other
scenes and encampments new.




Chapter 6
A Night in the Water


Yes, that was a pleasant life on picket, in the delicious early summer
of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming
isle. In the retrospect I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back
amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a six-mile radius,
and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint
impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two months; and
yet I remember certain periods of such dense darkness that in riding
through the wood-paths it was really unsafe to go beyond a walk, for
fear of branches above and roots below; and one of my officers was once
shot at by a Rebel scout who stood unperceived at his horse's bridle.

To those doing outpost-duty on an island, however large, the main-land
has all the fascination of forbidden fruit, and on a scale bounded
only by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until
we enter it,--and it is certainly so, if it be just the other side of
the hostile lines. Every grove in that blue distance appears enchanted
ground, and yonder loitering gray-back leading his horse to water in
the farthest distance, makes one thrill with a desire to hail him, to
shoot at him, to capture him, to do anything to bridge this inexorable
dumb space that lies between. A boyish feeling, no doubt, and one that
time diminishes, without effacing; yet it is a feeling which lies at
the bottom of many rash actions in war, and of some brilliant ones.
For one, I could never quite outgrow it, though restricted by duty
from doing many foolish things in consequence, and also restrained by
reverence for certain confidential advisers whom I had always at hand,
and who considered it their mission to keep me always on short rations
of personal adventure. Indeed, most of that sort of entertainment in
the army devolves upon scouts detailed for the purpose, volunteer
aides-de-camp and newspaper-reporters,--other officers being expected
to be about business more prosaic.

All the excitements of war are quadrupled by darkness; and as I rode
along our outer lines at night, and watched the glimmering flames which
at regular intervals starred the opposite river-shore, the longing was
irresistible to cross the barrier of dusk, and see whether it were men
or ghosts who hovered round those dying embers. I had yielded to these
impulses in boat-adventures by night,--for it was a part of my
instructions to obtain all possible information about the Rebel
outposts,--and fascinating indeed it was to glide along, noiselessly
paddling, with a dusky guide, through the endless intricacies of those
Southern marshes, scaring the reed-birds, which wailed and fled away
into the darkness, and penetrating several miles into the ulterior,
between hostile fires, where discovery might be death. Yet there were
drawbacks as to these enterprises, since it is not easy for a boat to
cross still water, even on the darkest night, without being seen by
watchful eyes; and, moreover, the extremes of high and low tide
transform so completely the whole condition of those rivers that it
needs very nice calculation to do one's work at precisely the right
tune. To vary the experiment, I had often thought of trying a personal
reconnoissance by swimming, at a certain point, whenever circumstances
should make it an object.

The oportunity at last arrived, and I shall never forget the glee with
which, after several postponements, I finally rode forth, a little
before midnight, on a night which seemed made for the purpose. I had,
of course, kept my own secret, and was entirely alone. The great
Southern fireflies were out, not haunting the low ground merely, like
ours, but rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination,
and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to
avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn
"Chuckwill's-widow" croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced
phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I
followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced
outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust itself far
out across the separating river,--thus fronting a similar causeway on
the other side, while a channel of perhaps three hundred yards, once
traversed by a ferry-boat, rolled between. At low tide this channel
was the whole river, with broad, oozy marshes on each side; at high
tide the marshes were submerged, and the stream was a mile wide. This
was the point which I had selected. To ascertain the numbers and
position of the picket on the opposite causeway was my first object,
as it was a matter on which no two of our officers agreed.

To this point, therefore, I rode, and dismounting, after being duly
challenged by the sentinel at the causeway-head, walked down the long
and lonely path. The tide was well up, though still on the flood, as I
desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-grass might, but for its
motionlessness, have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had
appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember
that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards,
struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning
is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a
ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern
night. There was no sound but the famt swash of the coming tide, the
noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a
fish; and it seemed to my overstrained ear as if every footstep of my
own must be heard for miles. However, I could have no more
postponements, and the thing must be tried now or never.

Reaching the farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like
black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I
expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but
knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on
that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined
Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous
question in his life. If I had casually remarked to him, "Mr. Hooper,
the General has ordered me on a brief personal reconnoissance to the
Planet Jupiter, and I wish you to take care of my watch, lest it
should be damaged by the Precession of the Equinoxes," he would have
responded with a brief "All right, Sir," and a quick military gesture,
and have put the thing in his pocket. As it was, I simply gave him the
watch, and remarked that I was going to take a swim.

I do not remember ever to have experienced a greater sense of
exhilaration than when I slipped noiselessly into the placid water, and
struck out into the smooth, eddying current for the opposite shore. The
night was so still and lovely, my black statues looked so dream-like at
their posts behind the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway
stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so
low around me,--for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an
oarsman,--that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic
crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of
my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and
nodded above; where the stars ended the great Southern fireflies began;
and closer than the fireflies, there clung round me a halo of
phosphorescent sparkles from the soft salt water.

Had I told any one of my purpose, I should have had warnings and
remonstrances enough. The few negroes who did not believe in
alligators believed in sharks; the sceptics as to sharks were orthodox
in respect to alligators; while those who rejected both had private
prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened
intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second
assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted
exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within
bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the
folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination
peoples the water with many things which do not belong there, or
prefer to keep out of his way, if they do; fevers and congestions were
the surgeon's business, and I always kept people to their own
department; cramp and exhaustion were dangers I could measure, as I
had often done; bullets were a more substantial danger, and I must
take the chance,--if a loon could dive at the flash, why not I? If I
were once ashore, I should have to cope with the Rebels on their own
ground, which they knew better than I; but the water was my ground,
where I, too, had been at home from boyhood.

I swam as swiftly and softly as I could, although it seemed as if water
never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything
uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some
floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some
unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that
undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially
comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would
enter my lips,--for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,--and
then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, that
seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I suppose the tendency to choke
and sneeze is always enhanced by the circumstance that one's life may
depend on keeping still, just as yawning becomes irresistible where to
yawn would be social ruin, and just as one is sure to sleep in church,
if one sits in a conspicuous pew. At other times, some unguarded motion
would create a splashing which seemed, in the tension of my senses, to
be loud enough to be heard at Richmond, although it really mattered not,
since there are fishes in those rivers which make as much noise on
special occasions as if they were misguided young whales.

As I drew near the opposite shore, the dark causeway projected more and
more distinctly, to my fancy at least, and I swam more softly still,
utterly uncertain as to how far, in the stillness of air and water, my
phosphorescent course could be traced by eye or ear. A slight ripple
would have saved me from observation, I was more than ever sure, and
I would have whistled for a fair wind as eagerly as any sailor, but that
my breath was worth to me more than anything it was likely to bring. The
water became smoother and smoother, and nothing broke the dim surface
except a few clumps of rushes and my unfortunate head. The outside of
this member gradually assumed to its inside a gigantic magnitude; it had
always annoyed me at the hatter's from a merely animal bigness, with no
commensurate contents to show for it, and now I detested it more than
ever. A physical feeling of turgescence and congestion in that region,
such as swimmers often feel, probably increased the impression. I
thought with envy of the Aztec children, of the headless horseman of
Sleepy Hollow, of Saint Somebody with his head tucked under his arm.
Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate
and stupid appendage. To be sure, I might swim for a certain distance
under water. But that accomplishment I had reserved for a retreat, for I
knew that the longer I stayed down the more surely I should have to
snort like a walrus when I came up again, and to approach an enemy with
such a demonstration was not to be thought of.

Suddenly a dog barked. We had certain information that a pack of hounds
was kept at a Rebel station a few miles off, on purpose to hunt
runaways, and I had heard from the negroes almost fabulous accounts of
the instinct of these animals. I knew that, although water baffled their
scent, they yet could recognize in some manner the approach of any
person across water as readily as by land; and of the vigilance of all
dogs by night every traveller among Southern plantations has ample
demonstration. I was now so near that I could dimly see the figures of
men moving to and fro upon the end of the causeway, and could hear the
dull knock, when one struck his foot against a piece of limber.

As my first object was to ascertain whether there were sentinels at
that time at that precise point, I saw that I was approaching the end
of my experiment Could I have once reached the causeway unnoticed, I
could have lurked in the water beneath its projecting timbers, and
perhaps made my way along the main shore, as I had known fugitive
slaves to do, while coming from that side. Or had there been any
ripple on the water, to confuse the aroused and watchful eyes, I could
have made a circuit and approached the causeway at another point,
though I had already satisfied myself that there was only a narrow
channel on each side of it, even at high tide, and not, as on our
side, a broad expanse of water. Indeed, this knowledge alone was worth
all the trouble I had taken, and to attempt much more than this, in
the face of a curiosity already roused, would have been a waste of
future opportunities. I could try again, with the benefit of this new
knowledge, on a point where the statements of the negroes had always
been contradictory.

Resolving, however, to continue the observation a very little longer,
since the water felt much warmer than I had expected, and there was no
sense of chill or fatigue, I grasped at some wisps of straw or rushes
that floated near, gathering them round my face a little, and then
drifting nearer the wharf in what seemed a sort of eddy was able,
without creating further alarm, to make some additional observations on
points which it is not best now to particularize. Then, turning my back
upon the mysterious shore which had thus far lured me, I sank softly
below the surface, and swam as far as I could under water.

During this unseen retreat, I heard, of course, all manner of gurglings
and hollow reverberations, and could fancy as many rifle-shots as I
pleased. But on rising to the surface all seemed quiet, and even I did
not create as much noise as I should have expected. I was now at a safe
distance, since the enemy were always chary of showing their boats, and
always tried to convince us they had none. What with absorbed attention
first, and this submersion afterwards, I had lost all my bearings but
the stars, having been long out of sight of my original point of
departure. However, the difficulties of the return were nothing; making
a slight allowance for the floodtide, which could not yet have turned, I
should soon regain the place I had left. So I struck out freshly against
the smooth water, feeling just a little stiffened by the exertion,
and with an occasional chill running up the back of the neck, but with
no nips from sharks, no nudges from alligators, and not a symptom of
fever-and-ague.

Time I could not, of course, measure,--one never can in a novel position;
but, after a reasonable amount of swimming, I began to look, with a
natural interest, for the pier which I had quitted. I noticed, with some
solicitude, that the woods along the friendly shore made one continuous
shadow, and that the line of low bushes on the long causeway could
scarcely be relieved against them, yet I knew where they ought to be,
and the more doubtful I felt about it, the more I put down my doubts, as
if they were unreasonable children. One can scarcely conceive of the
alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eye as low as the
horizon, especially by night; to distinguish foreshortening is
impossible, and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and
more remote. Still I had the stars; and soon my eye, more practised, was
enabled to select one precise line of bushes as that which marked the
causeway, and for which I must direct my course.

As I swam steadily, but with some sense of fatigue, towards this
phantom-line, I found it difficult to keep my faith steady and my
progress true; everything appeared to shift and waver, in the uncertain
light. The distant trees seemed not trees, but bushes, and the bushes
seemed not exactly bushes, but might, after all, be distant trees. Could
I be so confident that, out of all that low stretch of shore, I could
select the one precise point where the friendly causeway stretched its
long arm to receive me from the water? How easily (some tempter
whispered at my ear) might one swerve a little, on either side, and be
compelled to flounder over half a mile of oozy marsh on an ebbing tide,
before reaching our own shore and that hospitable volley of bullets with
which it would probably greet me! Had I not already (thus the tempter
continued) been swimming rather unaccountably far, supposing me on a
straight track for that inviting spot where my sentinels and my drapery
were awaiting my return?

Suddenly I felt a sensation as of fine ribbons drawn softly
across my person, and I found myself among some rushes. But what
business had rushes there, or I among them? I knew that there was not a
solitary spot of shoal in the deep channel where I supposed myself
swimming, and it was plain in an instant that I had somehow missed my
course, and must be getting among the marshes. I felt confident, to be
sure, that I could not have widely erred, but was guiding my course for
the proper side of tie river. But whether I had drifted above or below
the causeway I had not the slightest clew to tell.

I pushed steadily forward, with some increasing sense of lassitude,
passing one marshy islet after another, all seeming strangely out of
place, and sometimes just reaching with my foot a soft tremulous shoal
which gave scarce the shadow of a support, though even that shadow
rested my feet. At one of these moments of stillness it suddenly
occurred to my perception (what nothing but this slight contact could
have assured me, in the darkness) that I was in a powerful current, and
that this current set _the wrong way_. Instantly a flood of new
intelligence came. Either I had unconsciously turned and was rapidly
nearing the Rebel shore,--a suspicion which a glance at the stars
corrected,--or else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which
was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking
away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse
of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to rescue
a shipwrecked crew.

Either alternative was rather formidable. I can distinctly remember
that for about one half-minute the whole vast universe appeared to
swim in the same watery uncertainty in which I floated. I began to
doubt everything, to distrust the stars, the line of low bushes for
which I was wearily striving, the very land on which they grew, if
such visionary things could be rooted anywhere. Doubts trembled in my
mind like the weltering water, and that awful sensation of having
one's feet unsupported, which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart,
seemed to clutch at mine, though not yet to enter it. I was more
absorbed in that singular sensation of nightmare, such as one may feel
equally when lost by land or by water, as if one's own position were
all right, but the place looked for had somehow been preternaturally
abolished out of the universe. At best, might not a man in the water
lose all his power of direction, and so move in an endless circle
until he sank exhausted? It required a deliberate and conscious effort
to keep my brain quite cool. I have not the reputation of being of an
excitable temperament, but the contrary; yet I could at that moment
see my way to a condition in which one might become insane in an
instant. It was as if a fissure opened somewhere, and I saw my way
into a mad-house; then it closed, and everything went on as before.
Once in my life I had obtained a slight glimpse of the same sensation,
and then, too, strangely enough, while swimming,--in the mightiest
ocean-surge into which I had ever dared plunge my mortal body. Keats
hints at the same sudden emotion, in a wild poem written among the
Scottish mountains. It was not the distinctive sensation which
drowning men are said to have, that spasmodic passing in review of
one's whole personal history. I had no well-defined anxiety, felt no
fear, was moved to no prayer, did not give a thought to home or
friends; only it swept over me, as with a sudden tempest, that, if I
meant to get back to my own camp, I must keep my wits about me. I must
not dwell on any other alternative, any more than a boy who climbs a
precipice must look down. Imagination had no business here. That way
madness lay. There was a shore somewhere before me, and I must get to
it, by the ordinary means, before the ebb laid bare the flats, or
swept me below the lower bends of the stream. That was all.

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