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Army Life in a Black Regiment

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




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

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

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

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




Chapter 11
Florida Again?


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

"CAMP SHAW, BEAUFORT, S. C.,

February 7, 1864.

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

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

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

"February 11, 1864.

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

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

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

"Sublime uncertainties again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"February 19.

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

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

"February 23, 1864.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"February 29.

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




Chapter 12
The Negro as a Soldier


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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