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Army Life in a Black Regiment

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




"Sunday Afternoon. "The bewildering report is confirmed; and in
addition to the Sixth Connecticut, which came yesterday, appears part
of the Eighth Maine. The remainder, with its colonel, will be here
to-morrow, and, report says, Major-General Hunter. Now my hope is that
we may go to some point higher up the river, which we can hold for
ourselves. There are two other points [Magnolia and Pilatka], which,
in themselves, are as favorable as this, and, for getting recruits,
better. So I shall hope to be allowed to go. To take posts, and then
let white troops garrison them,--that is my programme.

"What makes the thing more puzzling is, that the Eighth Maine has only
brought ten days' rations, so that they evidently are not to stay here;
and yet where they go, or why they come, is a puzzle. Meanwhile we can
sleep sound o' nights; and if the black and white babies do not quarrel
and pull hair, we shall do very well."

Colonel Rust, on arriving, said frankly that he knew nothing of the
plans prevailing in the Department, but that General Hunter was
certainly coming soon to act for himself; that it had been reported at
the North, and even at Port Royal, that we had all been captured and
shot (and, indeed, I had afterwards the pleasure of reading my own
obituary in a Northern Democratic journal), and that we certainly needed
reinforcements; that he himself had been sent with orders to carry out,
so far as possible, the original plans of the expedition; that he
regarded himself as only a visitor, and should remain chiefly on
shipboard,--which he did. He would relieve the black provost-guard by a
white one, if I approved,--which I certainly did. But he said that he
felt bound to give the chief opportunities of action to the colored
troops,--which I also approved, and which he carried out, not quite to
the satisfaction of his own eager and daring officers.

I recall one of these enterprises, out of which we extracted a good
deal of amusement; it was baptized the Battle of the Clothes-Lines. A
white company was out scouting in the woods behind the town, with one
of my best Florida men for a guide; and the captain sent back a
message that he had discovered a Rebel camp with twenty-two tents,
beyond a creek, about four miles away; the officers and men had been
distinctly seen, and it would be quite possible to capture it. Colonel
Rust at once sent me out with two hundred men to do the work,
recalling the original scouts, and disregarding the appeals of his own
eager officers. We marched through the open pine woods, on a
delightful afternoon, and met the returning party. Poor fellows! I
never shall forget the longing eyes they cast on us, as we marched
forth to the field of glory, from which they were debarred. We went
three or four miles out, sometimes halting to send forward a scout,
while I made all the men lie down in the long, thin grass and beside
the fallen trees, till one could not imagine that there was a person
there. I remember how picturesque the effect was, when, at the signal,
all rose again, like Roderick Dhu's men, and the green wood appeared
suddenly populous with armed life. At a certain point forces were
divided, and a detachment was sent round the head of the creek, to
flank the unsuspecting enemy; while we of the main body, stealing with
caution nearer and nearer, through ever denser woods, swooped down at
last in triumph upon a solitary farmhouse,--where the family-washing
had been hung out to dry! This was the "Rebel camp"!

It is due to Sergeant Greene, my invaluable guide, to say that he had
from the beginning discouraged any high hopes of a crossing of
bayonets. He had early explained that it was not he who claimed to
have seen the tents and the Rebel soldiers, but one of the
officers,--and had pointed out that our undisturbed approach was
hardly reconcilable with the existence of a hostile camp so near. This
impression had also pressed more and more upon my own mind, but it was
our business to put the thing beyond a doubt. Probably the place may
have been occasionally used for a picket-station, and we found fresh
horse-tracks in the vicinity, and there was a quantity of iron
bridle-bits in the house, of which no clear explanation could be
given; so that the armed men may not have been wholly imaginary. But
camp there was none. After enjoying to the utmost the fun of the
thing, therefore, we borrowed the only horse on the premises, hung all
the bits over his neck, and as I rode him back to camp, they clanked
like broken chains. We were joined on the way by our dear and devoted
surgeon, whom I had left behind as an invalid, but who had mounted his
horse and ridden out alone to attend to our wounded, his green sash
looking quite in harmony with the early spring verdure of those lovely
woods. So came we back in triumph, enjoying the joke all the more
because some one else was responsible. We mystified the little
community at first, but soon let out the secret, and witticisms
abounded for a day or two, the mildest of which was the assertion that
the author of the alarm must have been "three sheets in the wind."

Another expedition was of more exciting character. For several days
before the arrival of Colonel Rust a reconnois-sance had been planned in
the direction of the enemy's camp, and he finally consented to its being
carried out. By the energy of Major Corwin, of the Second South Carolina
Volunteers, aided by Mr. Holden, then a gunner on the Paul Jones, and
afterwards made captain of the same regiment, one of the ten-pound
Parrott guns had been mounted on a hand-car, for use on the railway.
This it was now proposed to bring into service. I took a large detail of
men from the two white regiments and from my own, and had instructions
to march as far as the four-mile station on the railway, if possible,
examine the country, and ascertain if the Rebel camp had been removed,
as was reported, beyond that distance. I was forbidden going any farther
from camp, or attacking the Rebel camp, as my force comprised half our
garrison, and should the town meanwhile be attacked from some other
direction, it would be in great danger.

I never shall forget the delight of that march through the open pine
barren, with occasional patches of uncertain swamp. The Eighth Maine,
under Lieutenant-Colonel Twich-ell, was on the right, the Sixth
Connecticut, under Major Meeker, on the left, and my own men, under
Major Strong, in the centre, having in charge the cannon, to which
they had been trained. Mr. Heron, from the John Adams, acted as
gunner. The mounted Rebel pickets retired before us through the woods,
keeping usually beyond range of the skirmishers, who in a long
line--white, black, white--were deployed transversely. For the first
time I saw the two colors fairly alternate on the military chessboard;
it had been the object of much labor and many dreams, and I liked the
pattern at last. Nothing was said about the novel fact by anybody,--it
all seemed to come as matter-of-course; there appeared to be no mutual
distrust among the men, and as for the officers, doubtless "each crow
thought its own young the whitest,"--I certainly did, although doing
full justice to the eager courage of the Northern portion of my
command. Especially I watched with pleasure the fresh delight of the
Maine men, who had not, like the rest, been previously in action, and
who strode rapidly on with their long legs, irresistibly recalling, as
their gaunt, athletic frames and sunburnt faces appeared here and
there among the pines, the lumber regions of their native State, with
which I was not unfamiliar.

We passed through a former camp of the Rebels, from which everything had
been lately removed; but when the utmost permitted limits of our
reconnoissance were reached, there were still no signs of any other
camp, and the Rebel cavalry still kept provokingly before us. Their
evident object was to lure us on to their own stronghold, and had we
fallen into the trap, it would perhaps have resembled, on a smaller
scale, the Olustee of the following year. With a good deal of
reluctance, however, I caused the recall to be sounded, and, after a
slight halt, we began to retrace our steps.

Straining our eyes to look along the reach of level railway which
stretched away through the pine barren, we began to see certain
ominous puffs of smoke, which might indeed proceed from some fire in
the woods, but were at once set down by the men as coming from the
mysterious locomotive battery which the Rebels were said to have
constructed. Gradually the smoke grew denser, and appeared to be
moving up along the track, keeping pace with our motion, and about two
miles distant. I watched it steadily through a field-glass from our
own slowly moving battery: it seemed to move when we moved and to halt
when we halted. Sometimes in the dun smoke I caught a glimpse of
something blacker, raised high in the air like the threatening head of
some great gliding serpent. Suddenly there came a sharp puff of
lighter smoke that seemed like a forked tongue, and then a hollow
report, and we could see a great black projectile hurled into the air,
and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not
at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and
wounded two more. This was fired wide, but the numerous shots which
followed were admirably aimed, and seldom failed to fall or explode
close to our own smaller battery.

It was the first time that the men had been seriously exposed to
artillery fire,--a danger more exciting to the ignorant mind than any
other, as this very war has shown.* So I watched them anxiously.
Fortunately there were deep trenches on each side the railway, with many
stout, projecting roots, forming very tolerable bomb-proofs for those
who happened to be near them. The enemy's gun was a sixty-four-pound
Blakely, as we afterward found, whose enormous projectile moved very
slowly and gave ample time to cover,--insomuch, that, while the
fragments of shell fell all around and amongst us, not a man was hurt.
This soon gave the men the most buoyant confidence, and they shouted
with childish delight over every explosion.

*Take this for example: "The effect was electrical. The Rebels were the
best men in Ford's command, being Lieutenant-Colonel Showalter's
Californians, and they are brave men. They had dismounted and sent their
horses to the rear, and were undoubtedly determined upon a desperate
fight, and their superior numbers made them confident of success. But
they never fought with artillery, and a cannon has more terror for them
than ten thousand rifles and all the wild Camanches on the plains of
Texas. At first glimpse of the shining brass monsters there was a
visible wavering in the determined front of the enemy, and as the shells
came screaming over their heads the scare was complete. They broke
ranks, fled for their horses, scrambled on the first that came to hand,
and skedaddled in the direction of Brownsville."_New York Evening Post_,
September 25, 1864.

The moment a shell had burst or fallen unburst, our little gun was
invariably fired in return, and that with some precision, so far as we
could judge, its range also being nearly as great. For some reason they
showed no disposition to overtake us, in which attempt their locomotive
would have given them an immense advantage over our heavy hand-car, and
their cavalry force over our infantry. Nevertheless, I rather hoped that
they would attempt it, for then an effort might have been made to cut
them off in the rear by taking up some rails. As it was, this was out of
the question, though they moved slowly, as we moved, keeping always
about two miles away. When they finally ceased firing we took up the
rails beyond us before withdrawing, and thus kept the enemy from
approaching so near the city again. But I shall never forget that
Dantean monster, rearing its black head amid the distant smoke, nor the
solicitude with which I watched for the puff which meant danger, and
looked round to see if my chickens were all under cover. The greatest
peril, after all, was from the possible dismounting of our gun, in which
case we should have been very apt to lose it, if the enemy had showed
any dash. There may be other such tilts of railway artillery on record
during the war; but if so, I have not happened to read of them, and so
have dwelt the longer on this.

This was doubtless the same locomotive battery which had previously
fired more than once upon the town,--running up within two miles and then
withdrawing, while it was deemed inexpedient to destroy the railroad, on
our part, lest it might be needed by ourselves in turn. One night, too,
the Rebel threat had been fulfilled, and they had shelled the town with
the same battery. They had the range well, and every shot fell near the
post headquarters. It was exciting to see the great Blakely shell,
showing a light as it rose, and moving slowly towards us like a comet,
then exploding and scattering its formidable fragments. Yet, strange to
say, no serious harm was done to life or limb, and the most formidable
casualty was that of a citizen who complained that a shell had passed
through the wall of his bedroom, and carried off his mosquito curtain in
its transit.

Little knew we how soon these small entertainments would be over.
Colonel Montgomery had gone up the river with his two companies,
perhaps to remain permanently; and I was soon to follow. On Friday,
March 27th, I wrote home: "The Burnside has gone to Beaufort for
rations, and the John Adams to Fernandina for coal; we expect both
back by Sunday, and on Monday I hope to get the regiment off to a
point farther up,--Magnolia, thirty-five miles, or Pilatka,
seventy-five,--either of which would be a good post for us. General
Hunter is expected every day, and it is strange he has not come." The
very next day came an official order recalling the whole expedition,
and for the third time evacuating Jacksonville.

A council of military and naval officers was at once called (though
there was but one thing to be done), and the latter were even more
disappointed and amazed than the former. This was especially the case
with the senior naval officer, Captain Steedman, a South-Carolinian by
birth, but who had proved himself as patriotic as he was courteous and
able, and whose presence and advice had been of the greatest value to
me. He and all of us felt keenly the wrongfulness of breaking the
pledges which we had been authorized to make to these people, and of
leaving them to the mercy of the Rebels once more. Most of the people
themselves took the same view, and eagerly begged to accompany us on our
departure. They were allowed to bring their clothing and furniture also,
and at once developed that insane mania for aged and valueless trumpery
which always seizes upon the human race, I believe, in moments of
danger. With the greatest difficulty we selected between the essential
and the non-essential, and our few transports were at length loaded to
the very water's edge on the morning of March 29th,--Colonel Montgomery
having by this time returned from up-river, with sixteen prisoners, and
the fruits of foraging in plenty.

And upon that last morning occurred an act on the part of some of the
garrison most deeply to be regretted, and not to be excused by the
natural indignation at then- recall,--an act which, through the
unfortunate eloquence of one newspaper correspondent, rang through the
nation,--the attempt to burn the town. I fortunately need not dwell
much upon it, as I was not at the time in command of the post,--as the
white soldiers frankly took upon themselves the whole
responsibility,--and as all the fires were made in the wooden part of
the city, which was occupied by them, while none were made in the
brick part, where the colored soldiers were quartered. It was
fortunate for our reputation that the newspaper accounts generally
agreed in exculpating us from all share in the matter;* and the single
exception, which one correspondent asserted, I could never verify, and
do not believe to have existed. It was stated by Colonel Rust, in his
official report, that some twenty-five buildings in all were burned,
and I doubt if the actual number was greater; but this was probably
owing in part to a change of wind, and did not diminish the discredit
of the transaction. It made our sorrow at departure no less, though it
infinitely enhanced the impressiveness of the scene.

*"The colored regiments had nothing at all to do with it; they behaved
with propriety throughout" _Boston Journal_ Correspondence. ("Carleton.")

"The negro troops took no part whatever in the perpetration of this
Vandalism."_New York Tribune_ Correspondence. ("N. P.")

"We know not whether we are most rejoiced or saddened to observe, by the
general concurrence of accounts, that the negro soldiers had nothing to
do with the barbarous act" _Boston Journal_ Editorial, April 10, 1863.


The excitement of the departure was intense. The embarkation was so
laborious that it seemed as if the flames must be upon us before we
could get on board, and it was also generally expected that the Rebel
skirmishers would be down among the houses, wherever practicable, to
annoy us to the utmost, as had been the case at the previous evacuation.
They were, indeed, there, as we afterwards heard, but did not venture to
molest us. The sight and roar of the flames, and the rolling clouds of
smoke, brought home to the impressible minds of the black soldiers all
their favorite imagery of the Judgment-Day; and those who were not too
much depressed by disappointment were excited by the spectacle, and sang
and exhorted without ceasing.

With heavy hearts their officers floated down the lovely river, which we
had ascended with hopes so buoyant; and from that day to this, the
reasons for our recall have never been made public. It was commonly
attributed to proslavery advisers, acting on the rather impulsive nature
of Major-General Hunter, with a view to cut short the career of the
colored troops, and stop their recruiting. But it may have been simply
the scarcity of troops in the Department, and the renewed conviction at
head-quarters that we were too few to hold the post alone. The latter
theory was strengthened by the fact that, when General Seymour
reoccupied Jacksonville, the following year, he took with him twenty
thousand men instead of one thousand,--and the sanguinary battle of
Olustee found him with too few.




Chapter 5
Out on Picket


One can hardly imagine a body of men more disconsolate than a regiment
suddenly transferred from an adventurous life in the enemy's country
to the quiet of a sheltered camp, on safe and familiar ground. The men
under my command were deeply dejected when, on a most appropriate
day,--the First of April, 1863,--they found themselves unaccountably
recalled from Florida, that region of delights which had seemed theirs
by the right of conquest. My dusky soldiers, who based their whole
walk and conversation strictly on the ancient Israelites, felt that
the prophecies were all set at naught, and that they were on the wrong
side of the Red Sea; indeed, I fear they regarded even me as a sort of
reversed Moses, whose Pisgah fronted in the wrong direction. Had they
foreseen how the next occupation of the Promised Land was destined to
result, they might have acquiesced with more of their wonted
cheerfulness. As it was, we were very glad to receive, after a few
days of discontented repose on the very ground where we had once been
so happy, an order to go out on picket at Port Royal Ferry, with the
understanding that we might remain there for some time. This picket
station was regarded as a sort of military picnic by the regiments
stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina; it meant blackberries and
oysters, wild roses and magnolias, flowery lanes instead of sandy
barrens, and a sort of guerilla existence in place of the camp
routine. To the colored soldiers especially, with their love of
country life, and their extensive personal acquaintance on the
plantations, it seemed quite like a Christmas festival. Besides, they
would be in sight of the enemy, and who knew but there might, by the
blessing of Providence, be a raid or a skirmish? If they could not
remain on the St. John's River, it was something to dwell on the
Coosaw. In the end they enjoyed it as much as they expected, and
though we "went out" several times subsequently, until it became an
old story, the enjoyment never waned. And as even the march from the
camp to the picket lines was something that could not possibly have
been the same for any white regiment in the service, it is worth while
to begin at the beginning and describe it.

A regiment ordered on picket was expected to have reveille at daybreak,
and to be in line for departure by sunrise. This delighted our men, who
always took a childlike pleasure in being out of bed at any unreasonable
hour; and by the time I had emerged, the tents were nearly all struck,
and the great wagons were lumbering into camp to receive them, with
whatever else was to be transported. The first rays of the sun must fall
upon the line of these wagons, moving away across the wide
parade-ground, followed by the column of men, who would soon outstrip
them. But on the occasion which I especially describe the sun was
shrouded, and, when once upon the sandy plain, neither camp nor town nor
river could be seen in the dimness; and when I rode forward and looked
back there was only visible the long, moving, shadowy column, seeming
rather awful in its snake-like advance. There was a swaying of flags and
multitudinous weapons that might have been camels' necks for all one
could see, and the whole thing might have been a caravan upon the
desert. Soon we debouched upon the "Shell Road," the wagon-train drew on
one side into the fog, and by the time the sun appeared the music
ceased, the men took the "route step," and the fun began.

The "route step" is an abandonment of all military strictness, and
nothing is required of the men but to keep four abreast, and not lag
behind. They are not required to keep step, though, with the rhythmical
ear of our soldiers, they almost always instinctively did so; talking
and singing are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly
availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of exhilaration.
There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it
might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the
ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned the
tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments. At cross-roads and
plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one
found a friend and a greeting. "How you do, aunty?" "Huddy (how d'ye),
Budder Benjamin?" "How you find yourself dis mor-nin', Tittawisa (Sister
Louisa)?" Such saluations rang out to everybody, known or unknown. In
return, venerable, kerchiefed matrons courtesied laboriously to every
one, with an unfailing "Bress de Lord, budder." Grave little boys,
blacker than ink, shook hands with our laughing and utterly unmanageable
drummers, who greeted them with this sure word of prophecy, "Dem's de
drummers for de nex' war!" Pretty mulatto girls ogled and coquetted, and
made eyes, as Thackeray would say, at half the young fellows in the
battalion. Meantime the singing was brisk along the whole column, and
when I sometimes reined up to see them pass, the chant of each company,
entering my ear, drove out from the other ear the strain of the
preceding. Such an odd mixture of things, military and missionary, as
the successive waves of song drifted byl First, "John Brown," of course;
then, "What make old Satan for follow me so?" then, "Marching Along";
then, "Hold your light on Canaan's shore"; then, "When this cruel war is
over" (a new favorite, sung by a few); yielding presently to a grand
burst of the favorite marching song among them all, and one at which
every step instinctively quickened, so light and jubilant its rhythm,--

"All true children gwine in de wilderness,
Gwine in de wilderness, gwine in de wilderness,
True believers gwine in de wilderness,
To take away de sins ob de world,"--

ending in a "Hoigh!" after each verse,--a sort of Irish yell. For all
the songs, but especially for their own wild hymns, they constantly
improvised simple verses, with the same odd mingling,--the little
facts of to-day's march being interwoven with the depths of
theological gloom, and the same jubilant chorus annexed to all;
thus,--

"We're gwin to de Ferry,
De bell done ringing;
Gwine to de landing,
De bell done ringing;
Trust, believer
O, de bell done ringing;
Satan's behind me,
De bell done ringing;
'T is a misty morning,
De bell done ringing;
O de road am sandy,
De bell done ringing;
Hell been open,
De bell done ringing";--

and so on indefinitely.

The little drum-corps kept in advance, a jolly crew, their drums slung
on their backs, and the drum-sticks perhaps balanced on their heads.
With them went the officers' servant-boys, more uproarious still,
always ready to lend their shrill treble to any song. At the head of
the whole force there walked, by some self-imposed pre-eminence, a
respectable elderly female, one of the company laundresses, whose
vigorous stride we never could quite overtake, and who had an enormous
bundle balanced on her head, while she waved in her hand, like a
sword, a long-handled tin dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun,
war, and music I believe no white regiment in the service could have
shown; and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum
would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we
marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road,--beneath
jasmine clusters, and great pine-cones dropping, and great bunches of
misletoe still in bloom among the branches. Arrived at the station,
the scene soon became busy and more confused; wagons were being
unloaded, tents pitched, water brought, wood cut, fires made, while
the "field and staff" could take possession of the abandoned quarters
of their predecessors, and we could look round in the lovely summer
morning to "survey our empire and behold our home."

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