 Chapter 3 of Army Life in a Black Regiment This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by FNH. Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Hickinson Chapter 3 Up the St. Mary's If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal Robert Sutton was the natural prime minister. If not in all respects the ableist, he was the wisest man in our ranks. As large, as powerful, and as black as our good-looking colour, Sergeant, but more heavily built and with less personal beauty, he had a more massive brain and a far more meditative and systematic intellect. Not yet grounded even in the spelling-book, his modes of thought were nevertheless strong, lucid and accurate, and he yearned and pined for the intellectual companionship beyond all ignorant men whom I have ever met. I believe he would have talked all day and all night for days together to any officer who could instruct him until his companions at least fell asleep exhausted. His comprehension of the whole problem of slavery was more thoroughly and far-reaching than that of any abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went. In that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly. Superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the solid truth. Of course his interest in the war and in the regiment was unbounded. He did not take to drill with a special readiness, but he was insatiable of it and grudged every moment of relaxation. Indeed he never had any such moments, his mind was at work at all time, even when he was singing hymns of which he had an endless store. He was not, however, one of our leading religionists, but his moral code was solid and reliable, like his mental processes. Ignorant as he was, the years that bring that philosophic mind had yet been his, and most of my young officers seemed boys beside him. He was a Florida man, and had been chiefly employed in lumbering and pilanting on the St. Mary's River which divides Florida from Georgia. Down this stream he had escaped in a dugout, and after thus finding his way had returned, as had not a few of my men in other cases, to bring away wife and child. I wouldn't have left my child cuddled, he said, with an emphasis that sounded the depths of his strong nature, and up this same river he was always imploring to be allowed to guide an expedition. Many other men had rival propositions to urge, for they gained self-confidence from drill and guard duty, and were growing impatient of inaction. Or to go to work, sir, don't believe him we lying in camp eating up deep provisions. Such was the quaint complaints which I heard with joy. Looking over my notebooks of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda jotted down by a flickering candle from the evening talk of the men. Notes of vulnerable points along the coast, charts of rivers, locations of pickets. I prized these conversations not more for what I thus learned of the country than for what I learned of the men. One could thus measure their various degrees of accuracy and their average military instinct, and I must say that in every respect save the accurate estimate of distances they stood the test well. But no project took my fancy so much, after all, as that of the delegate from the St. Mary's River. The best peg on which to hang an expedition in the Department of the South in those days was the promise of lumber. Dwelling in the very land of southern Pine, the Department authorities had to send north for it at a vast expense. There was reported to be plenty in the enemy's country, but somehow the coloured soldiers were the only ones who had been lucky enough to obtain any thus far, and the supply brought in by our men, after flooring the tents of the white regiments and our own, was running low. An expedition of white troops, full companies with two steamers and two schooners, had lately returned empty-handed, after a week's foraging, and now it was our turn. They said the mills were all burned, but should we go up the St. Mary's, Corporal Sutton was prepared to offer more lumber than we had transportation to carry. This made the crowning charm of his suggestion, but there is never any danger of airing on the side of secrecy in a military department, and I resolved to avoid all undue publicity for our plans, by not finally deciding on any until we could get outside of the bar. This was happily approved by my superior officers, Major General Hunter and Brigadier General Saxton, and I was accordingly permitted to take three steamers with four hundred and sixty-two officers and men, and two or three invited guests, and go down the coast on my own responsibility. We were, in short, to win our spurs, and if as many among the Arocanians as spurs were made of lumber, so much the better. The whole history of the Department of the South had been defined as a military picnic, and now we were to take our share of the entertainment. It seems a pleasant share, when, after the usual vexations and delays, we found ourselves, January 23rd, 1863, gliding down the full waters of Beaufort River, with three vessels having sailed at different hours, with orders to rendezvous at St. Simon's Island on the coast of Georgia. Until then, the flagship, so to speak, was to be the Bendy Ford, Captain Hallett, this being by far the largest vessel and carrying most of the men. Major Strong was in command upon the John Adams, an army gunboat, carrying a thirty-pound parrot gun, two ten-pound parrots, and an eight-inch howitzer. Captain Trowbridge, since promoted Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment, had charged the famous planter, brought away from the rebels by Robert Small. She carried a ten-pound parrot gun and two howitzers. The John Adams was our main reliance. She was an old East Boston ferryboat, a double-ender, amourable for river work, but unfit for sea service. She drew seven feet of water. The planter drew only four, but the latter was very slow, and being obliged to go to St. Simon's by an inner passage would delay us from the beginning. She delayed us so much before the end that we virtually parted company, and her career was almost entirely separated from our own. From boyhood I have had a fancy for boats, and have seldom been without a share, usually more or less fractional, in a rather indeterminate number of punts and worries. But when for the first time I found myself at sea as Commodore of a fleet of armed steamers, for even Bendy Ford boasted a six-pounder or so, it seemed rather an unexpected promotion. But it is characteristic of army life that one adapts oneself as coolly as in a dream to the most novel of responsibilities. One sits on a court-martial, for instance, and decides on the life of a fellow creature without being asked any inconvenient questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone, and after such an experience shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quigassimonde. If military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility under any circumstances, this would perhaps have been a good opportunity to begin his practice. But as the regulations clearly contemplated nothing of the kind, and I had never met with any precedent which looked in that direction, I had learned to check promptly all such weak proclivities. Captain Hallett proved the most frank and manly of sailors, and did everything for our comfort. He was soon warm in his praises of the demeanour of their men, which was very pleasant to hear, as this was the first time that coloured soldiers in any number had been conveyed on board a transport, and I know of no place where a white volunteer appears to be so much disadvantage. His mind craves occupation, his body is intensely uncomfortable, the daily emergency is not great enough to call out his heroic qualities, and he is apt to be surly, discontented and impatient even of the sanitary rules. The southern black soldier on the other hand is seldom seasick, at least such is my experience, and if properly managed is equally contented whether idle or busy. He is moreover so docile that all needful rules are executed with cheerful acquiescence, and the quarters can therefore be kept clean and wholesome. Very falorn faces were soon visible among the offices in the cabin, but I rarely saw such among the men. Pleasant still seemed our enterprise as we anchored at early morning in the quiet waters of St. Simon's Sound, and saw the light fall softly on the beach and the low bluffs on the picturesque plantation houses which nestled there and the graceful naval vessels that lay at anchor before us. When we afterwards landed, the air had that peculiar Mediterranean translucency which southern islands wear, and the plantation we visited had the loveliest tropical garden, though tangled and desolate, which I had ever seen in the south. The deserted house was empowered in great blossoming shrubs and filled with higher synthodas, among which predominated that of the little Chickasaw roses which everywhere bloomed and trailed around. There were fig trees and date palms, crepe myrtles and wax myrtles, Mexican agres and English ivies, japonicas, bananas, oranges, lemons, oleanders, jonquils, great cactuses, and wild florida lilies. This was not the plantation which Mrs. Kembal has since made historic, although that was on the same island, and I could not waste much sentiment over it, for it had belonged to a northern renegade, Thomas Butler King. Yet I felt then, as I have felt a hundred times since, an emotion of heart sickness at this desecration of a homestead, and especially when looking from a bare upper window of the empty house upon a range of broad, flat, sunny roofs such as children love to play on. I thought how that place might have been loved by yet innocent hearts, and I mourned anew the sacrilege of war. I had visited the flagship Wabash, air we left Port Royal Harbour, and had obtained a very kind letter of introduction from Admiral Dupont, that stately, courtly potentate, elegant as one's ideal French marquis, and under these credentials I received polite attention from the naval officers at St. Simon's, acting volunteer Lieutenant Bud of the Gumboat Potomiska, and acting master Moses of the bark Fernandina. They made valuable suggestions in regard to the different rivers along the coast, and gave vivid descriptions of the last previous trip up the St. Mary's undertaken by Captain Stevens, USN, in the Gumboat Ottawa, when he had to fight his way past batteries at every bluff in descending the narrow and rapid stream. I was warned that no resistance would be offered to the ascent, but only to our return, and was further cautioned against this mistake, then common, of underrating the courage of the rebels. It proved impossible to dislodge those fellows from the banks, my informant said. They had dug rifle pits and swarmed like hornets, and when fairly silenced in one direction they were sure to open upon us from another. All this sounded alarming, but it was nine months since the event had happened, and although nothing had gone up the river meanwhile, I counted on less resistance now, and something must be risked anywhere. We were delayed all that day in waiting for our consort, and improved our time by verifying certain rumours about a quantity of new rail-road iron, which was said to be concealed in the abandoned rebels' forts on St. Simon's and Jekyll Islands, and which would have much value at Port Royal if we could unearth it. Some of our men had worked upon these very batteries, so that they could easily guide us, and by the additional discovery of a large, flat boat, we were enabled to go to work in earnest upon the removal of the treasure. These iron bars, amounted by a dozen feet of sand, formed an invulnerable roof for the magazines and bomb-proofs of the fort, and the men enjoyed demolishing them far more than they had relished their construction. Though the day was the 24th of January, 1863, the sun was very oppressive upon the sands, but all were in the highest spirits and worked with the greatest seal. The men seemed to regard these massive bars as their first trophies, and if the rails had been wreathed with roses, they could not have been got out in a more holiday style. Nearly a hundred were obtained that day, besides a quantity of five-inch plank, with which to barricade the very conspicuous pilot houses of the John Adams. Still another day we were delayed, and could still keep at this work, not neglecting some foraging on the island, from which horses, cattle, and agricultural implements were to be removed, and the few remaining coloured families transferred to the Fernandina. I had now become quite anxious about the missing steamboat, as the inner passage, by which alone she could arrive, was exposed at certain points to fire from rebel batteries, and it would have been unpleasant to begin with a disaster. I remember that, as I stood on deck in the still and misty evening, listening with strange senses for some sound of approach, I heard a low, continuous noise from the distance, more wild and desolate than anything in my memory can parallel. It came from within the vast girdle of mist, and seemed like the cry of a myriad of lost souls upon the horizon's verge. It was Dante becoming audible, and yet it was but the accumulated cries of innumerable seafowl at the entrance to the outer bay. Late that night the planter arrived. We left St. Simon's on the following morning, each fort clinched by four o'clock, and there transferring two hundred men to the very scanty quarters at John Adams allowed the larger transport to go into Fernandina, while the other two vessels were to ascend the St. Mary's River, unless, as proved inevitable in the end, the defects of the boiler in the planter should oblige her to remain behind. That night I proposed to make a sort of trial trip upstream, as far as the township landing, some fifteen miles, to pay our respects to Captain Clark's company of Cavalry, whose camp was reported to lie nearby. This was included in Corporal Sutton's programme, and seemed to me more inviting and far more useful to the men than any amount of mere foraging. The thing really desirable appeared to be to get them under fire as soon as possible, and to teach them, by a few small successes, the application of what they had learned in camp. I had ascertained that the camp of this company lay five miles from the landing, and was accessible by two roads, one of which was a lumber path not commonly used, but which Corporal Sutton had helped to construct, and along which he could easily guide us. The plan was to go by night, surround the house and negro cabins at the landing, to prevent an alarm from being given, then to take the side path, and if all went well, to surprise the camp. But if they got notice of our approach through their pickets, we should at worst have a fight in which the best man must win. The moon was bright and the river swift, but easy of navigation thus far. Just below township I landed a small advance force to surround the houses silently. With them went Corporal Sutton, and when after rounding the point, I went on shore with a larger body of men, he met me with a silent chuckle of delight, and with the information that there was a negro in the neighbouring cabin, who had just come from the rebel camp, and could give the latest information. While he hunted up the valuable auxiliary, I mustered my detachment, winnowing out the men who had coughs, not a few, and sending them ignominiously on board again, a process I had regularly to perform during this first season of Qatar on all occasions where quiet was needed. The only exception, tolerated at the time, was in the case of one man who offered a solemn pledge that, if unable to restrain his cough, he would lie down on the ground, scrape a little hole, and cough into it unheard. The ingenuity of this proposition was irresistible, and the eager patient was allowed to pass muster. It was after midnight when we set off upon our excursion. I had about a hundred men marching by the flank, with a small advance guard, and also a few flankers, where the ground permitted. I put my Florida company at the head of the column, and had by my side Captain Metcalf, an excellent officer, and Sergeant McIntyre, his first sergeant. We plunged presently into Pine Woods whose resinous smell I can still remember. Corporal Sutton marched near me with his captured Negro guide, whose first fear and sulleness had yielded to the magic news of the President's proclamation, then just issued, of which Governor Andrew had sent me a large printed supply. We seldom found men who could read it, but they all seemed to feel more secure when they had held it in their hands. We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of the frogs in a neighbouring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a dog as we passed the hut of some cracker. This yelping always made Corporal Sutton uneasy. Dogs are detective officers of slavery police. We had halted once or twice to close up the ranks, and had marched some two miles, seeing and hearing nothing more. I had got all I could out of our new guide, and was striding on, wracked in pleasing contemplation. All had gone so smoothly that I had merely to fancy the rest as being equally smooth. Already I fancied our little detachment bursting out of the woods in swift surprise upon the rebel quarters. Already the opposing commander, after hastily firing a charge or two from his revolver, of course above my head, had yielded at discretion, and was gracefully tendering in stage attitude his unavailing sword, when suddenly there was a trampling of feet among the advance guard as they came confusedly to a halt, and almost at the same instant a more ominous sound as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader of an approaching party mounted on a white horse and reigning up in the pathway. Others again declared that he drew a pistol from the holster and took aim. Others heard the words, charge in upon them, surround them. But all this was confused by the opening rifle shots of our advance guard, and as clear observation was impossible, I made the men fix their baynets and kneeling the cover on each side of the pathway, and I saw with delight the brave fellows with Sergeant McIntyre at their head, settling down in the grass as coolly and wearily as if wild turkeys were the only game. Perhaps at the first shot a man fell at my elbow. I felt it no more than if a tree had fallen. I was so busy watching my own men and the enemy and planning what to do next. Some of our soldiers misunderstanding the order fixed bayonets were actually charging with them, dashing off into the dim woods with nothing to charge at but the vanishing tail of an imaginary horse, for we could really see nothing. This zeal I noted with pleasure and also with anxiety, as our greatest danger was from confusion and scattering, and for infantry to pursue cavalry would be a novel enterprise. Captain Metcalf stood by me, well in keeping the men steady, as did Assistant Sergeant Minor and Lieutenant, now Captain, Jackson. How the men in the rear were behaving I could not tell, not so coolly I afterwards found, because they were more entirely bewildered, supposing until the shots came that the column had simply halted for a moment's rest, as had been done once or twice before. They did not know who or where their assailants might be, and the fall of the man beside me created a hasty rumour that I was killed, so that it was on the whole an alarming experience for them. They kept together very tolerably, however, while our assailants dividing rode along each side through the open pine barren firing into our ranks, but mostly over the heads of the men. My soldiers in turn fired rapidly, too rapidly, being at beginners, and it was evident that in the dim as it was, both sides had opportunity to do some execution. I could hardly tell whether the fight had lasted ten minutes or an hour, when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them desist. The taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was heard to mutter indignantly. Why did Cunnell order cease firing when D. Sashesh blazing away at a rate of $10 a day? Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without interrupting the main course of thought. Thus I know that in one of the pauses of the affair there was some wailing through the woods, a cracked female voice, as if calling some stray husband who had run out to join the affray. John, John, are you going to leave me, John? Are you going to let me and the children be killed, John? I suppose the poor things feared of gunpowder were very genuine, but it was such a wailing squeak, and so infinitely ludicrous, and John was probably in sconce so very safely in some hollow tree, that I could see some of the men showing all their white teeth in the very midst of the fight, but soon this sound with all the others had ceased and left us in peaceful possession of the field. I have made more of this little affair, because it was the first stand-up fight in which my men had been engaged, though they had been under fire in an irregular way in their small early expeditions. To me personally the event was of greatest value. It had given us all an opportunity to test each other, and our abstract surmises were changed into positive knowledge. Hereafter it was of no small importance what nonsense might be talked or written about colored troops, so long as mine did not flinch it made no difference to me. My brave young officers themselves mostly knew to danger, viewed the matter much as I did, and yet we were under the bonds of life and death to form a correct opinion, which was more than can be said of the northern editors, and our verdict was proportionately of greater value. I was convinced from appearances that we had been victorious so far, though I could not suppose that this would be the last of it. We knew neither the numbers of the enemy, nor their plans, nor their present condition, whether they had surprised us or whether we had surprised them was all a mystery. Corporal Sutton was urgent to go on and completely enterprise. All my impulses said the same thing, but then I had the most explicit injunctions from General Saxton to risk as little as possible in this first enterprise because of the fatal effect on public sentiment of even an honorable defeat. We had now an honorable victory so far as it went. The officers and men around me were in good spirits, but the rest of the column might be nervous and it seemed so important to make the first fight an entire success that I thought it wiser to let well alone, nor have I ever changed this opinion. For one self, Montrose's verse may well be applied, to win or lose it all. But one has no right to deal thus lightly with the fortunes of a race, and that was the weight which I always felt as resting on our action. If my raw infantry force had stood unflinchingly a night surprise from debossed cavalry, as they reverently termed them, I felt that a good beginning had been made. All hope of surprising the enemy's camp was now at an end. I was willing and ready to fight the cavalry over again, but it seemed wiser that we, not they, should select the ground. Attending to the wounded, therefore, and making as best we could stretchers for those who were to be carried, including the remains of the man killed at the first discharge, Private William Parsons of Company G, and others who seemed at the point of death, we marched through the woods to the landing, expecting at every moment to be involved in another fight. This not occurring. I was more than ever satisfied that we had won the victory, for it was obvious that a mounted force would not allow a detachment of infantry to march two miles through open woods at night without renewing the fight unless they themselves had suffered a good deal. On arrival at the landing, it seemed that there was to be no immediate affray. I sent most of the men on board and called for volunteers to remain on shore with me and hold the plantation house till morning. I eagerly offered, and I was glad to see them when posted as sentinels by Lieutenant's Hyde and Jackson who stayed with me, paced their beets as steadily and challenged as coolly as veterans, though of course there was some powder wasted on imaginary foes. Greatly to my surprise, however, we had no other enemies to encounter. We did not yet know that we had killed the first Lieutenant of the Cavalry and that our opponents had retreated to the woods in dismay without daring to return to their camp. At least was the account we heard from prisoners afterwards and was evidently the tale current in the neighbourhood though the statements published in the southern newspapers did not correspond. Admitting the death of Lieutenant Jones, the Tallahassee Floridian of February 14th stated that Captain Clark, finding the enemy in strong force, fell back with his command to camp and removed his ordnance and commissary from the stores with twelve negroes on their way to the enemy captured that day. This morning my invaluable surgeon, Dr. Rogers, sent me his report of killed and wounded and I have been since permitted to make the following extracts from his notes. One man killed instantly by ball through the heart and seven wounded, one of whom will die. Braver men never lived, one man with two bullet holes through the large muscles of the shoulders and neck brought off from the scene of action, two miles distant, two muskets and not a murmur as escaped his lips. Braver, Robert Sutton, with three wounds, one of which was being on the skull, may cost him his life, would not report himself till compelled to do so by his officers. While dressing his wounds he quietly talked of what they had done and of what they yet could do. Today I have had the Colonel order him to obey me. He is perfectly quiet and cool but takes this whole affair with the religious bearing of a man who realises that freedom is sweeter than life. Yet another soldier did not report himself at all but remained all night on guard and possibly I should not have known of his having a buckshot in the shoulder if some duty requiring a sound shoulder had not been required of him today. This last it may be added had persuaded a comrade to dig out the buckshot for fear of being ordered on the sick list and one of those who were carried to the vessel, a man who'd been through the lungs, asked only if I was safe, having been reported. An officer may be pardoned some enthusiasm for such men as these. The anxious night having passed away without an attack another problem opened with the morning. For the first time my officers and men found themselves in possession of an enemy's abode and though there was but little temptation to plunder I knew that I must here begin to draw the line. I had long since resolved to prohibit absolutely all indiscriminate pilfering and wanton outrage and to allow nothing to be taken or destroyed but by proper authority. The men, to my great satisfaction, entered into this view at once and so did perhaps a shade less readily in some cases the officers. The greatest trouble was with the steamboat hands and I resolved to let them go ashore as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already however before our visit gone from the plantation house which was now used only as a picket station. The only valuable article was a piano faute for which a regular packing box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind in accordance with the orders given to naval commanders in that department to burn all picket stations and all villages from which I could be covertly attacked and nothing else and as this house was destined to the flames I should have left the piano in it but for the seductions of that box with such a receptacle already even to the cover it would have seemed like flying in the face of Providence not to put the piano in. I ordered it removed therefore and afterwards presented it to the school for coloured children at Fernandina. This I mention because it is the only article of property I ever took or knowingly suffered to be taken in the enemy's country save for legitimate military uses from first to last nor would I have taken this but for the thought of the school and as aforesaid the temptation of the box if any other officer had been more rigid with equal opportunities let him cast the first stone it is my desire to avoid the destruction of private property unless used for picket or guard stations or for other military purposes by the enemy of course if fired upon from any place it is your duty if possible to destroy it letter of Admiral Dupont commanding South Atlantic squadron Lieutenant Commander Hughes of United States Gumboat Mohawk, Fernandina Harbour I think the zest with which my men finally set fire to the house at my order was enhanced by this previous abstemiousness but there is a fearful fascination in the use of fire which every child knows in the abstract and which I found to hold true in practice on our way down the river we had opportunity to test this again the ruined town of St Mary's had at that time a bad reputation among both naval and military men lying but a short distance above Fernandina on the Georgia side it was occasionally visited by our gunboats I was informed that the only residents of the town were three old women who were apparently kept there as spies that on our approach the aged crones would come out and wave white handkerchiefs and that they would receive us hospitably profess to be profoundly loyal and exhibit a portrait of Washington that they would solemnly assure us that no rebel pickets had been there for many weeks but that in the adjoining yard we would find fresh horse tracks and that we should be fired upon by guerrillas the moment we left the wharf my officers had been much excited by these tales and I had assured them that if this program were literally carried out we would straight away return and burn the town or what was left of it for our share it was essential to show my officers and men that while rigid against irregular outrage we could still be inexorable against the enemy we had previously planned to stop at this town on our way down river for some valuable lumber which we had aspired on a wharf and gliding down the swift current shelling a few bluff as we passed we soon reached it punctual as the figures in a panorama appeared the old ladies with their white handkerchiefs taking possession of the town much of which had previously been destroyed by the gunboats and stationing the colour guard to the infinite delight in the cupola of the most conspicuous house I deployed skirmishers along the exposed suburb and set a detail of men to work on the lumber after a stately and decorous interview with the Queens of Society of St. Mary's it is Scott who says that nothing improves the manners like piracy I peacefully withdrew the men when the work was done there were faces of disappointment among the officers for all felt a spirit of mischief after last night's adventure when just as we had fairly swung out into the stream and were under way there came like the sudden burst of a tropical tornado a regular little hail storm of bullets into the open end of the boat driving every gunner in an instant from his post and surprising even those who were looking to be surprised the shock was but for a second and though the bullets had patted precisely like the sound of hail upon the iron cannon yet nobody was hurt with very respectable promptness order was restored our own shells were flying into the woods from which the attack proceeded and we were steaming up to the wharf again according to promise who shall describe the theatrical attitudes assumed by the old ladies as they reappeared at the front door being luckily out of the direct range and set the handkerchiefs in wilder motion than ever they brandished them they twirled them after the manner of the domestic mop they clashed their hands handkerchiefs included meanwhile their friends in the woods popped away steadily at us with small effect and occasionally an invisible field piece thundered feebly from another quarter with equally invisible results reaching the wharf one company under lieutenant now captain danelson was promptly deployed in search of our assailants who soon grew silent not so the old ladies when I announced to them my purpose and added with extreme regret that as the wind was high they should burn only that half of the town which lay to leeward of their house which did not after all amount to much between gratitude for the degree of mercy and imploring appeals for greater the treacherous old ladies manoeuvred with clasped hands and demonstrative handkerchiefs around me impairing the effect of their eloquence by constantly addressing me as Mr. Captain for I have observed that while the sternest officer is greatly propitated by attributing to him a rank a little higher than his own yet no one is ever mollified by an error in the opposite direction I tried however to disregard such low considerations and to strike the correct mean between the sublime patriot and the unsanctified incendiary while I could find no refuge from weak contrition saving greater and greater depths of courtesy and so melodramatic became our interview that some of the soldiers still maintain that M. D. O. C. Sesh women been a quine for kiss decunnel before we ended but of this monstrous accusation I wish to register an explicit denial once and for all dropping down to Fernandina and molested after this affair we were kindly received by the military and naval commanders Colonel Hawley of the 7th Connecticut now Brigadier General Hawley and Lieutenant Commander Hughes of the Gumboat Mohawk it turned out very opportunity that both of these officers had special errands to suggest still further up the St. Mary's and precisely in the region where I wished to go Colonel Hawley showed me a letter from the War Department requesting him to ascertain the possibility of obtaining a supply of brick for Fort Clinch from the Brickyard which had furnished the original materials but which had not been visited since the perilous river trip of the Ottawa Lieutenant Hughes wished to obtain information for the admiral respecting a rebel steamer, the Barozo said to be lying somewhere up the river and awaiting her chance to run the blockade I jumped at the opportunity Barozo and Brickyard both were near Woodstock the former home of Corporal Sutton he was ready and eager to pilot us up the river the moon would be just right that evening setting at 3 hours and 90 minutes a.m and our boat was precisely the one to undertake the expedition its double-headed shape was just what was needed in that swift and crooked stream the exposed pilot houses had been tolerably barricaded with thick planks from St. Simon's and we further obtained some sandbags from Fort Clinch through the aid of Captain Sears, the officer in charge who had originally suggested the expedition after Brick in return for this aid the planter was sent back to the Wharf at St. Mary's to bring away a considerable supply of the same precious article which we had observed near the Wharf meanwhile the John Adams was coaling from naval supplies through the kindness of Lieutenant Hughes and the Bendy Ford was taking in the lumber which we had yesterday brought down it was a great disappointment to be unable to take the latter vessel up the river but I was unwillingly convinced that though the depth of the water might be sufficient yet her length would be unmanageable in the swift current and sharp turns the planter must also be sent on a separate cruise as a weak disabled machinery had made her useless for the purpose two hundred men were therefore transferred as before to the narrow hold of the John Adams in addition to the company permanently stationed on board to work the guns at seven o'clock in the evening of January the 29th beneath a lovely moon we steamed up the river never shall I forget the mystery and excitement of that night I know nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown river leading far into an enemy's country where one glides in the dim moonlight between the dark hills and meadows each turn of the channel making it seem like an inland lake and cutting you off as by a barrier from all behind with no sign of human life but an occasional picket fire left glimmering beneath the bank or the help of a dock from some low lying plantation on such occasions every nerve is strained to its utmost tension all dreams of romance appear to promise immediate fulfillment all lights on board the vessel are obscured loud voices are hushed you fancy a thousand men on shore and yet see nothing the lonely river unaccustomed to furrowing kills lapses by the vessel with a treacherous sound and all the senses emerged in a sort of anxious trance three times I have had in full perfection this fascinating experience but that night was the first and its zest was the keenest it will come back to me in dreams if I live a thousand years I feared no attack during our ascent that danger was for our return but I feared the intricate navigation of the river though I did not fully know till the actual experience how dangerous it was we pass without trouble far above the scene of our first fight the battle of the hundred pines as my officers have baptised it and ever as we ascended the banks grew steeper the current swifter the channel more torturous and more encumbered with projecting branches and drifting wood no piloting less skillful than that of Corporal Sutton and his mate James Bezzard could have carried us through I thought a no-side will steamer less strong than a ferry boat could have borne the crash and force with which we struck the wooded banks of the river but the powerful paddles built to the break the northern ice could crush the southern pine as well and we came safely out of the entanglements that at first seemed formidable we had the tide with us which makes steering far more difficult and in the sharp angles of the river there was often no resource but to run the bow boldly on shore let the stern swing round and then reverse the motion as the reversing machinery was generally out of order the engineers stupid or frightened and the captain excited this involved moments of tolerably concentrated anxiety eight times we grounded in the upper waters and once lay a ground for half an hour but at last we dropped anchor before the little town of Woodstock after moonset and an hour before daybreak just as I had planned and so quietly that scarcely a dog barked and not a soul in the town as we afterwards found knew of our arrival as silently as possible the great flat boat which we had brought from St. Simon's was filled with men Major Strong was sent on shore with two companies those of Captain James and Captain Metcalf with instructions to surround the town quietly allow no one to leave it molest no one and hold as temporary prisoners every man whom he found I watched them push off into the darkness got the remaining force ready to land and then paced the deck for an hour in silent watchfulness waiting for rifle shots not a sound came from the shore save the barking of dogs and the morning crow of cocks the time seemed interminable but when daylight came I landed and found a pair of scarlet trousers pacing on their beat before every house in the village and a small squad of prisoners stunted and forlorn as Falstar's ragged regiment already in hand I observed with delight the good demeanour of my men towards the forlorn Anglo-Saxons and towards the more tumultuous women even one soldier who threatened to throw an old termigrant into the river took care to append the courteous effe-fet madam I took a survey of the premises the chief house, a pretty one with picturesque outbuildings was that of Mrs A. who owned the mills and lumber-warves adjoining the wealth of these warves had not been exaggerated there was lumber enough to fright half a dozen steamers and I half regretted that I had agreed to take down a freight of bricks instead further researches made me grateful that I had already explained to my men the difference between public foraging and private plunder along the river bank I found building after building crowded with costly furniture all neatly packed just as it was sent up from St Mary's when the town was abandoned pianos were a drug china, glassware, mahogany pictures were all here and here were my men who knew that their own labour had earned for their masters these luxuries or such as these their own wives and children were still sleeping on the floor perhaps at Beaufort or Ferdinandina and yet they submitted almost without a murmur to the enforced abstinence bed and bedding for our hospitals they might take from those storerooms such as the surgeon selected also an old flag which we found in a corner and an old field piece which the regiment still possesses but after this the doors were closed and left unmolested it caused a struggle to some of the men whose wives were destitute I know but their pride was very easily touched and when this abstinence was once recognised as a rule they claimed it as an honour in this and all succeeding expeditions I flatter myself that if they had once been set upon wholesome plundering they would have done it as thoroughly as their betters but I have always been infinitely grateful both for the credit and for the discipline of the regiment as well as for the men's subsequent lives that the opposite method was adopted when the morning was a little advanced I called on Mrs. A who received me in quite a stately way at her own door with to what am I indebted for the honour of this visit sir the foreign name of the family and the tropical look of the buildings made it seem as indeed did all the rest of the adventure like a chapter out of Amious Lay but as I happen to hear that the lady herself was a Philadelphian and her deceased husband a New Yorker I could not feel even that modicum of reverence due to sincere Southerners however I wish to present my credentials so calling up my companion I said that I believe she had been previously acquainted with Corporal Robert Sutton I never saw a finer bit of unutterable indignation that came over the face of my hostess as she slowly recognised him she drew herself up and dropped out the monosyllables of her answer as if they were so many drops of nitric acid ah! quote my lady we called him Bob it was a group for a painter the whole drama of the war seemed to reverse itself in an instant a mitol well-dressed imposing philosophic corporal dropped down the immeasurable depth into a mere plantation Bob again so at least in my imagination, not to that person himself two essentially dignified in his nature to be moved by words the substantial realities were in question he simply turned from the lady, touched his hat to me and asked if I would wish to see the slave jail as he had the keys in his possession if he fancied that I was in danger of being overcome by blandishments and needed to be recalled to realities it was a master stroke I must say that when that door of that villainous edifice was thrown open before me I felt glad that my main interview with the lady proprietor had passed before I saw it it was a small building, like a northern corn barn and seemed to be as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment in the middle of the door was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox chain for fastening a victim down when the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain we found also three pairs of stocks of various construction two of which had smaller as well as larger holes evidently for the feet of women or children in a building nearby we found something far more complicated which was perfectly unintelligible till the men explained all its parts a machine so contrived that a person once imprisoned in it could neither sit, stand nor lie but must support the body half raised in a position scarcely indurable I have since bitterly reproached myself for leaving this piece of ingenuity behind but it would have cost much labour to remove it and to bring away the other trophies seemed then enough I remember the unutterable loathing with which I leaned against the door of that present house I had thought myself seasoned to any conceivable horrors of slavery but it seemed as if the visible presence of that den of sin would choke me of course it would have been burned to the ground by us but that this would have involved the sacrifice of every other building and all the piles of lumber and for the moment it seemed as if the sacrifice would be righteous but I forbore and only took the trophies, the instruments of torture and the keys of the jail we found but a few coloured people in this vicinity some we brought away with us and an old man and woman preferred to remain all the white males whom we found I took as hostages in order to shield us if possible from attack on our way down river explaining to them that they would be put ashore once the dangerous points were passed I knew that their wives could easily send notice of this fact to the rebel forces along the river my hostages were a forlorn looking set of crackers far inferior to our soldiers in physique and yet quite equal the latter declared to the average material of the southern armies none were in uniform but this proved nothing as to their being soldiers one of them a mere boy was captured at his own door with gun in hand it was a fouling piece which he used only as his mother plaintively assured me to shoot little birds with as the garless youth had for this purpose loaded the gun with 18 buckshot we thought it justifiable to confiscate both the weapon and the owner in mercy to the birds we took from this place for the use of the army a flock of some 30 sheep 40 bushels of rice some other provisions tools oars and a little lumber leaving all possible space for the bricks which we expected to obtain just below I should have gone further up the river but for a dangerous boom which kept back to great number of logs in a large brook that here fell into St. Mary's the stream ran with force and if the rebels had wit enough to do it they might in ten minutes so choke the river with driftwood as infinitely to enhance her troubles so we dropped down the stream a mile or two found the very brickyard from which the fort clinch had been constructed still stored with bricks and seemingly unprotected here Sergeant Rivers again planted his standard and the men toiled eagerly for several hours in loading our boat to the utmost with bricks meanwhile we questioned black and white witnesses and learned for the first time that the rebels admitted a repulse at township landing and that Lieutenant Jones and ten of their number were killed though this I fancy to have been an exaggeration they have also declared that the mysterious steamer Barossa was lying at the head of the river was but a broken down and worthless affair and would never get to see the result has since proved this for the vessel subsequently ran the blockade and founded near shore the crew barely escaping with their lives I had the pleasure as it happened of being the first person to forward this information to Admiral de Pront when it came through the pickets many months after thus concluding my report on the Barossa before the work at the yard was over the pickets reported mounted men in the woods nearby as had previously been the report at Woodstock this admonished us to lose no time and as we left the wharf immediate arrangements were made to have the gun crews in all readiness and to keep the rest of the men below since their musketry would be of little use now and I did not propose to risk a life unnecessarily the chief obstacle to this was their own eagerness penned down on one side they popped up on the other their officers too were eager to see what was going on and were almost as hard to cork down as the men add to this that the vessel was now very crowded and that I had to be chiefly on the hurricane deck with the pilots Captain Clinton master of the vessel was brave to excess and as much excited as the men he could no more be kept in the little pilot house than that below and when he had passed one or two bluffs with no sign of the enemy he grew more and more irrepressible and exposed himself conspicuously on the upper deck perhaps we are all a little lulled by the apparent safety for myself I lay down for a moment on a settee in a stateroom having been on my feet almost without cessation for 24 hours suddenly they swept down from a bluff above us on the Georgia side a mingling of shout and roar and rattles of a tornado let loose and as a storm of bullets came pelting against the sides of the vessel and through the window they went up a shrill answering shout from our own men it took but an instant for me to reach the gun deck after all my efforts the men had swarmed once more from below and already crowding at both ends of the boat were loading and firing with inconceivable rapidity shouting to each other never give it up and of course having no steady aim as the vessel glided and whirled in the swift current meanwhile the officers in charge of the large guns had their crews in order and our shells began to fly over the bluffs which as we now saw should have been shelled in advance only that we had to economise on ammunition the other soldiers I drove below almost by main force with the aid of their officers who behaved exceedingly well giving the men leave to fire through the open portholes which lined the lower deck almost at the water's level in the very midst of the melee Major Strong came from the upper deck with a face of horror and whispered to me Captain Clifton was killed at the first shot by my side if he had said that the vessel was on fire the shock would hardly have been greater of course the military commander on board a steamer was almost as helpless as an unarmed man so far as the risks of water go a seaman must come on there in the hazardous voyage of last night I had learned though unjustly to distrust every official on board the steamboat except this excitable brave warm-hearted sailor and now among those added dangers to lose him the responsibility for his life also thrilled me he was not among my soldiers and yet he was killed I thought of his wife and children of whom he had spoken but one learns to think rapidly in war and cautioning the Major to silence I went up to the hurricane deck and drew in the helpless body that it should be safe from further desecration and then look to see where we were we were now gliding past a safe reach of marsh while our assailants were riding by cross-pass to attack at the next bluff it was Reed's bluff where we were first attacked and Scrubby Bluffer I think was next they were shelled in advance but swarmed manfully to the banks again as we swept round one of the sharp angles of the stream beneath their fire my men were now pretty well in prison below in the hot and crowded hold and actually fought each other the officers said afterwards for places at the open portholes from which to aim others implored to be landed exclaiming that they supposed the Colonel knew best but it was mighty mean to be shut up down below when they might be fighting deser sesh in Declare field this clear field and no favour was what they thence forward sighed for but in such difficult navigation it would have been madness to think of landing although one daring rebel actually sprang upon a large boat which we towed astern where he was shot down by one of our sergeants this boat was soon after swamped and abandoned then taken and repaired by the rebels at a later date and finally by a piece of dramatic completeness was seized by a party of fugitive slaves who escaped in it to our lines and some of whom enlisted in our own regiment it has always been rather a mystery to me why the rebels did not fell a few trees across the stream at some of the many sharp angles where we might so easily have thus been imprisoned this however they did not attempt and with the skillful pilotage of our trusty corporal philosophics as so crates through all the din and occasionally relieving his mind by taking a shot with his rifle through the high portholes of the pilot house we glided safely on the steamer did not ground once on the descent and the mating command Mr Smith did his duty very well the plank sheathing of the pilot house was penetrated by a few bullets though struck by so many outside that it was visited as a curiosity after our return and even among the gun crews though they had no protection not a man was hurt as we approached some wooded bluff usually on the Georgia side we could see galloping along the hillside what seemed a regiment of mounted riflemen and could see our shells scatter them ere we approached shelling did not however prevent a rather fierce fuselage from our old friends of Captain Dark's company at Waterman's bluff near township landing but even this did no serious damage and this was the last it was of course impossible while thus running the gauntlet to put our hostages ashore and I could only explain to them that they must thank their own friends for their inevitable detention I was by no means proud of their forlorn appearance and besought Colonel Hawley to tank them off my hands but he was sending no flags of truce at that time and liked their looks no better than I did so I took them to Port Royal where they were afterwards sent safely across the lines and men were pleased at taking them back with us as they had already said regretfully suppose we leave Demn Ciesesh at Fernandina General Saxby won't see them there were some new natural curiosity which indeed they were one soldier further suggested the expediency of keeping them permanently in camp to be used as marks for the guns of the relieved guard every morning but this was rather ebullient of fancy than a sober proposition against these levities I must put a piece of more tragic eloquence which I took down by night on the steamer's deck from the thrilling harangue of Corporal Adam Alston one of our most gifted prophets whose influence over the men was unbounded when I heard, he said the bombshellers screaming through the woods like the judgment day I said to myself if my head was took off tonight they couldn't put my soul in detourments percepts except God was my enemy and when the rifle bullets come whizzing across the deck I cry aloud God help me congregation boys load and fire I must pass briefly over the few remaining days of our cruise at Fernandina we met the planter which had been successful on her separate expedition and had destroyed the extensive salt works at Crooked River under charge of the energetic Captain Trowbridge efficiently aided by Captain Rogers our commodities being in part delivered at Fernandina our decks being full, coal nearly out, and time up we called once more at St. Simon's Sound bringing away the remainder of our railroad iron with some of which the naval officers had previously disinterred and then steamed back to Beaufort Arriving there at sunrise, February 2nd, 1863 I made my way with Dr. Rogers to General Saxton's bedroom and laid before him the keys and shackles of the slave prison with my report of the good conduct of the men as Dr. Rogers remarked a message from heaven and another from hell Slight as this expedition now seems among the vast events of the war the future student of the newspapers of that day will find that it occupied no little space in their columns so intense was the interest which was then attached to the novel experiment of employing black troops so obvious too was the value during this raid of their local knowledge and their enthusiasm that it was impossible not to find in its successes new suggestions for the war suddenly I would not have consented to repeat the enterprise with the bravest white troops leaving Corporal Sutton and his mates behind for I should have expected to fail for a year after our raid the Upper St. Mary's remained unvisited till in 1864 the large force with which we held Florida secured peace upon its banks then Mrs. A took the oath of allegiance the government brought her remaining lumber and the John Adams again ascended with the detachment of my men under Lieutenant Parker and brought a portion of it to Fernandina by a strange turn of fortune Corporal Sutton, now Sergeant was at this time in jail at Hilton Head under sentence of Court Marshall for an alleged act of mutiny an affair in which the general voice of our officers sustained him and condemned his accusers so that he soon received a full pardon and was restored in honor to his place in the regiment which he has ever since held nothing can exaggerate the fascinations of war whether on the largest or smallest scale when we settled down into camp life again it seemed like a butterfly's folding its wings to re-enter the chrysalis none of us could listen to the crack of a gun without recalling instantly the sharp shots that spiralled down from the bluffs of St. Mary's or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without recalling the sounds which startled us on the field of the Hundred Pines the memory of our raid was preserved in the camp by many legends of adventure growing faster and more incredible as time wore on and by the morning appeals to the surgeon of some veteran invalids who could now cut off all reproofs and suspicions with Doctor, I's been a sickly pusson ever since the expeditious but to me the most vivid remembrance there was the flock of sheep which we had lifted the post quartermaster discreetly gave us the charge of them and they filled a gap in the landscape and in the larder which last had before presented one unvaried round of impenetrable beef Mr. Obadiah Oldbook when he decided to adopt a pastoral life and assume the provisional name of Thriasis never looked upon his flocks and herds with more unalloyed contentment than eye upon that fleecy family I'd been familiar in Kansas with the metaphor by which the sentiments of an owner were credited to his property and had heard of a pro-slavery cult and an anti-slavery cow the fact that these sheep were but recently converted from Ciesesh sentiments was their crowning charm we thought they frisked and fattened in the joy of their deliverance from the shadow of Mrs. A's slave jail and gladly contemplated translation into mutton broth for sick and wounded soldiers the very slaves who once per chance were sold at auction with the on-age patriarch of the flock had now asserted their humanity and would devour him as hospital rations meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet with a crook and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy those sheep-stealers of less elevated aims when I met in my daily rides these wandering trophies of our wider wanderings For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by FNH Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson Chapter 4 Up the St. John's There was not much stirring in the department of the south early in 1863 and the St. Mary's expedition had afforded a new sensation of course the few officers of coloured troops and a larger number who wished to become such were urgent for further experiments in the same line and the Florida tax commissioners were urgent likewise I well remember the morning when after some preliminary correspondence I steamed down from Beaufort SC to Hilton Head with General Saxton, Judge S and one or two others to have an interview on the matter with Major General Hunter then commanding the department Hilton Head in those days seemed always like some foreign military station in the tropics the long low white buildings with piazzas and verandas on the water side the general impression of heat and lassitude existence appearing to pulsate only with the sea breeze the sandy almost impassable streets and the firm level beach on which everybody walked who could get there all these suggested Jamaica or the East Indies then the headquarters at the end of the beach the suave sentinels, the successive anti-rooms the lounging aids, the good-natured and easy general easy by habit and energetic by impulse had all a certain air of southern langa rather picturesque but perhaps not altogether bracing General Hunter received us that day with his usual kindliness there was a good deal of pleasant chat Mars O'Reilly was called in to read his latest verses and then we came to the matter in hand Jacksonville on the St. John's River in Florida had been already twice taken and twice evacuated having been occupied by Brigadier General Wright in March 1862 and by Brigadier General Brannon in October of the same year the second evacuation was by Major General Hunter's own order on the avowed ground that a garrison of 5,000 was needed to hold the place and that this force could not be spared the present proposition was to take and hold it with a brigade of less than a thousand men carrying, however, arms and uniforms for twice that number and a month's rations the claim was that there were fewer rebel troops in the department than formerly and that St. Mary's expedition had shown the advantage possessed by coloured troops in local knowledge and in the confidence of loyal blacks it was also urged that it was worthwhile to risk something in the effort to hold Florida and perhaps bring it back into the Union my chief aim in the negotiation was to get the men into action and that of the Florida commissioners to get them into Florida thus far coinciding we could heartily cooperate and though General Hunter made some reasonable objections they were yielded more readily than I had feared and finally before half our logical ammunition was exhausted the desired permission was given and the thing might be considered as done we were now to leave as we supposed forever the camp which had thus far been our home our vast amount of surplus baggage made a heavy job in the loading in so much as we had no wharf and everything had to be put on board by the means of flat boats it was completed by 24 hours of steady work and after some of the usual uncomfortable delays which wait on military expeditions we were at last afloat I had tried to keep the plan as secret as possible and had requested to have no definite orders until we should be on board ship but this larger expedition was less within my own hands than was the St. Mary's affair and the great reliance for concealment was on certain counter reports ingeniously set afloat by some of the Florida men these reports rapidly swelled into the most enormous tales and by the time they reached the New York newspapers the expedition was a great volcano about bursting whose lava will burn, flow and destroy the sudden appearance in arms of no less than 5,000 negroes a liberating host not the phantom but the reality of servile insurrection what the undertaking actually was may be best seen in the instructions which guided it March 5th, 1863 Colonel, you will please proceed with your command the 1st and 2nd Regiments South Carolina Volunteers which are now embarked upon steamers John Adams, Bostons and Burnside to Fernandina, Florida relying upon your military skill and judgment I shall give you no special directions as to your procedure after you leave Fernandina I expect however that you will occupy Jacksonville, Florida and entrench yourselves there the main objects of your expedition are to carry the proclamation of the freedom to the enslaved to call all loyal men to the service of the United States to occupy as much of the state of Florida as possible with the forces under your command and to neglect no means consistent with the usages of civilized warfare to weaken, harass and annoy those who are in rebellion against the government of the United States trusting that the blessing of our Heavenly Father will rest upon your noble enterprise I am yours sincerely R. Saxton Brigadier General Military Governor Department of the South Colonel Higginson Commanding Expeditionary Corps In due time, after touching at Fernandina we reached the difficult bar of the St. John's and were piloted safely over Admiral DuPont had furnished a courteous letter of introduction and we were cordially received by Commander Duchen of the Norwich and Lieutenant Watson commanding the Uncus Flagship Wabash Port Royal Harbour SC March 6, 1863 Sir, I am informed by Major General Hunter that he is sending Colonel Higginson on an important mission in the southerly part of this department I have not been made acquainted with the objects of this mission but any assistance that you can offer Colonel Higginson which will not interfere with your other duties you are authorized to give Respectfully, your obedient servant SF DuPont, re-ameral commanding S. ATL Block Squad to the senior officer at the different blockading stations on the coast of Georgia and Florida Like all officers on blockade duty they were impatient of their enforced inaction and gladly seized the opportunity for a different service It was some time since they had ascended as high as Jacksonville for their orders were strict one vessel's coal was low the other was in infirm condition and there were rumours of cotton clads and torpedoes but they gladly agreed to escort us up the river so soon as our own armed gunboat the John Adams should arrive she being unaccountably delayed We waited 24 hours for her at the sultry mouth of that glassy river watching the great pelicans which floated lazily on its tide or sometime shooting one to admire the great pouch into which one of the soldiers could insert his foot as into a boot He held one quart, said the admiring experimentalist Hi boy, he reported another quickly Never you bring that quart measure in my pecker corn The protest came very promptly and was certainly fair for the strange receptacle would have held nearly a gallon We went on shore too and were shown a rather pathetic little garden which the naval officers had laid out indulging a dream of vegetables They lingered over their little microscopic sprouts pointing them out tenderly as if they were cradle babies I have often noticed this touching weakness in gentlemen of that profession on lonely stations We wandered among the bluffs too in the little deserted hamlet called Pilate Town The ever-shifting sand had in some cases almost buried the small houses and had swept around others in a circular drift at a few yards distance over topping their neaves and leaving each the untouched citadel of this natural redoubt There was also a dismantled lighthouse an object which seems the most dreary symbol of the barbarism of war when one considers the national beneficence which reared and kindled it Despite the service rendered by this once brilliant light there were many wrecks which had been strewn upon the beach victims of the most formidable of the southern river bars As I stood with my foot on the half-buried ribs of one of these vessels so distinctly traced that one might almost fancy them human The old pilot, my companion told me the story of the wreck The vessel had formally been in the Cuba trade and her owner, an American merchant residing in Havana had christened her for his young daughter I asked the name and was startled to recognise that of a favourite young cousin of mine besides the bones of whose representative I was thus strangely standing upon this lonely shore It was well to have something to relieve the anxiety that naturally felt at the delay of the John Adams Anxiety both for her safety and for the success of our whole enterprise The rebels had repeatedly threatened to burn the whole of Jacksonville in case of another attack and they had previously burned its mills and its great hotel It seemed as if the news of our arrival must surely have travelled 30 miles by this time All day we watched every smoke that rose among the wooded hills and consulted the compass and the map with that sign announced the doom of our expected home At the very last moment of the tide just in time to cross the bar that day the missing vessel arrived All anxieties vanished I transferred my quarters on board and at two the next morning we steamed up the river Again there was the dreamy delight of ascending an unknown stream beneath a sinking moon into a region where peril made fascination Since the time of the first explorers I suppose that those southern waters have known no sensations so dreamy and so bewitching as those which this war has brought forth I recall in this case the faintest sensations of our voyage Once Ponce de Leon may have recalled those of his wandering search in the same soft zone for the secret of the mystic fountain I remember how during that night I looked for the first time through a powerful night-glass It has always seemed a thing wholly inconceivable that a mere lens could change darkness into light and as I turned the instrument on the preceding gunboat and actually discerned the man at the wheel and the other standing about him all relapsing into a vague gloom again at the withdrawal of the glass it gave a feeling of childish delight Yet it seemed only in keeping with the whole enchantment of the scene and had I been some Aladdin conveyed by genie or giants I could hardly have felt more wholly a denzin of some world of romance But the river was a difficult navigation and we began to feel sometimes beneath the keel that ominous, sliding, grating, treacherous arrest of motion which makes the heart shudder as the vessel does There was some solicitude about torpedoes also a peril which became a formidable thing one year later in the very channel where we found none Soon one of our consorts grounded and then another every vessel taking its turn I believe and then in turn getting off until the Norwich lay hopelessly stranded for that tide at least a few miles below Jacksonville and out of sight of the city so that she could not even add to our dignity by a visible presence from afar This was rather a serious matter as the Norwich was our main naval reliance the Uncus being a small steamer of less than two hundred tonnes and in such poor condition that Commander Dookin unfinding himself aground at first quite declined to trust his consort any farther alone But having got thus far it was plainly my duty to risk the remainder with or without naval assistance and this being so the courageous officer did not long object but allowed his dashing subordinate to steam up with us to the city This left us one naval and one army gunboat Unfortunately the Burnside being a black propeller always passed for an armed vessel among the rebels and we rather encouraged that pleasing illusion We had aimed to reach Jacksonville at daybreak but these mishaps delayed us and we had several hours of fresh early sunshine lighting up the green shores of that lovely river wooded to the water's edge with sometimes an emerald meadow opening a vista to some picturesque house all utterly unlike anything we had yet seen in the south and suggesting rather they Penno Spicott or their Kennebook Here and there we glided by the ruins of some sawmill burned by the rebels on the General Wright's approach but nothing else spoke of war except perhaps the silence It was a delicious day and a scene of fascination Our Florida men were wild with delight and when we rounded the point below the city and saw from afar its long streets its brick warehouses its white cottages and its overshadowing trees all peaceful and undisturbed by flames It seemed in the men's favourite phrase too much good and all discipline was merged for the moment in a buzz of ecstasy The city was still there for us at any rate though none knew what perils might be concealed behind those quiet buildings yet there were children playing on the wharves careless men here and there lounged down to look at us hands in pockets a few women came to their doors and gazedliciously upon us shading their eyes with their hands We drew momentarily nearer in silence and with breathless attention The gunners were at their posts and the men in line It was eight o'clock We were now directly opposite the town yet no sign of danger was seen not a rifle shot was heard not a shell rose hissing into the air The anchors rounded too and dropped anchor in the stream by previous agreement I steamed to an up-up here of the town Colonel Montgomery to a lower one the little boat howitzers ran out upon the wharves and presently to the angles of the chief streets and the pretty town was our own without a shot In spite of our detention the surprise had been complete and not a soul in Jacksonville had dreamed of our coming The day passed quickly in eager preparations for defence the people could or would give us no definite information about the rebel camp which was however known to be near and our force did not permit our going out to surprise it The night following was the most anxious I ever spent We were all tired out the companies were under arms in various parts of the town to be ready for an attack at any moment My temporary quarters were beneath the loveliest grove of linden trees and as I reclined half dosing the mockingbirds sang all night like nightingales their notes seeming to trickle down through the sweet air from amid the blossoming boughs Day brought relief and the sense of due possession and we could see what we had won Jacksonville was now a United States post again the only post on the mainland in the Department of the South Before the war it had three or four thousand inhabitants and a rapidly growing lumber trade for which abundant facilities were evidently provided The wharves are capricious and the blocks of brick warehouses along the lower street were utterly unlike anything we had yet seen in that region it had been built up by the northern enterprise and much of the property was owned by loyal men it had been a great resort for invalids though the rebels had burned the large hotel which had once accommodated them mills had also been burned but the dwelling houses were almost all in good condition the quarters for the men were admirable and I took official possession of a handsome brick house of Colonel Sunderland the established headquarters through every occupation who's accommodating all the houses of every occupation who's accommodating flag staff had literally and repeatedly changed its colours the seceded Colonel reputed author of the state ordinance of secession was a New Yorker by birth and we found his law card issued when in practice in eastern Washington County, New York he certainly had good taste in planning the inside of a house though time had impaired its condition there was a neat office with ample bookcases and no books with no balls gas fixtures without gas and a bathing room without water there was a separate building for servants' quarters and a kitchen with every convenience even to a few jars of lingering pickles on the hull there was an air of substance and comfort about the town quite alien from the picturesque decadence of Beaufort the town rose gradually from the river and was bounded on the rear by a long sluggish creek beyond which lay a stretch of woods affording an excellent covert for the enemy but without great facilities for attack as there were but two or three fords and bridges this brook could easily be held against a small force but could at any time and almost at any point be readily crossed by a large one north of the town the land rose a little between the river and the sources of the brook and then sank to a plain which had been partially cleared by a previous garrison for so small a force as ours however this clearing must be extended nearer to the town otherwise our lines would be too long for our numbers this deficiency in numbers at once became a source of serious anxiety while planning the expedition it had seemed so important to get the men a foothold in Florida that I was willing to risk everything for it but this important post once in our possession it began to show some analogies to the proverbial elephant in the lottery to hold it permanently with 900 men was not perhaps impossible with the aid of a gunboat I had left many of my own regiments sick and on duty in Beaufort and Colonel Montgomery had as yet less than 150 but to hold it and also to make forays up the river certainly required a larger number we came in part to recruit but have found scarcely enabled bodied negro in the city all had been removed farther up and we must certainly contrive to follow them I was very unwilling to have as yet any white troops under my command with the blacks finally however being informed by Judge S of a conversation with Colonel Hawley commanding at Fernandina in which the latter had offered to send four companies of a light battery to swell our force in view of the aid given to his position by this more advanced post I decided to authorise the energetic judge to go back to Fernandina and renew the negotiation and matters must go thither at any rate for coal meanwhile all definite display of our force was avoided dress parades were omitted the companies were so distributed as to tell for the utmost and the judicious use was made here and there of empty tents the gunboats and transports moved impressively up and down the river from time to time the disposition of pickets was varied each night to perplex the enemy and some advantage taken of his distrust which might be assumed as equaling our own the citizens were duly impressed by our supply of ammunition which was really enormous and all these things soon took effect a loyal woman who came into town said that the rebel scouts stopping at her house reported that there were 1600 negroes all over the woods and the town full of them besides it was of no use to go in General Finnegan had driven them into a bad place once and should not do it again they had lost their captain and their best surgeon in the first skirmish and if the savannah people wanted the negroes driven away they might come and do it themselves unfortunately we knew that they could come easily from savannah at any time as there was railroad communication nearly all the way and every time we heard the steam whistle the men were convinced of their arrival thus we never could approach to any certainty as to their numbers while they could observe from the bluffs every steamboat that ascended the river to render our week four still more available we barricaded the approaches to the chief streets by constructing barriers or felling trees it went to my heart to sacrifice for this purpose several of my beautiful lindons but it was no time for aesthetics as the giants lay on the ground still senting the air with their abundant bloom I used to rain up my horse and watch the children playing hide and seek amongst their branches or some quiet cow grazing at the foliage nothing impresses the mind in war like some occasional object or association that belongs apparently to peace alone among all these solicitudes it was a great thing that one particular anxiety vanished in a day on the former expedition the men were upon trial as to their courage now they were to endure another test as to their demeanour as victors here were 500 citizens nearly all white at the mercy of their former slaves to some of these whites it was the last crowning humiliation and they were or profess to be in perpetual fear on the other hand the most intelligent and ladylike woman I saw the wife of a rebel captain rather surprised me by saying that it seemed pleasanter to have these men stationed there whom they had known all their lives and who had generally born a good character than to be in the power of entire strangers certainly the men deserved the confidence for there was scarcely an exception to their good behaviour I think they thoroughly felt their honour and their dignity were concerned in the matter and took too much pride in their character as soldiers to say nothing of higher motives to tarnish it by any misdeeds they watched their officers vigilantly and even suspiciously to detect any disposition towards compromise and so long as we pursued a just course it was evident that they could be relied on yet the spot was pointed out to me where two of our leading men had seen their brothers hanged by lynch law many of them had private wrongs to avenge and they all had utter disbelief in all pretended loyalty especially on the part of the women one citizen alone was brought to me in a sort of escort of honour by Corporal Prince Lampkin one of the colour guard and one of the ablest men the same who had once made a speech in camp reminding his hearers that they had lived under the American flag for 1862 years and ought to live and die under it Corporal Lampkin now introduced his man a German with the highest compliment in his power he had a true coloured man heart surrounded by mean cajoling insinuating white men and women who were all that and worse I was quite ready to appreciate the quality he thus proclaimed a coloured man heart in the rebel states is a fair synonym for a loyal heart and it is about the only such synonym in this case I found afterwards that the man in question a small grocer had been the object of suspicion to the whites from his readiness to lend money to the Negroes or sell to them on credit in which perhaps there may have been some mixture of self-interest with benevolence I resort to a notebook of that period well-thumbed and pocket-worn which sometimes received a fragment of the day's experience March 16, 1863 Of course stroll things are constantly occurring every white man, woman and child is flattering, seductive and profess union sentiment every black ditto believes that every white ditto is a scoundrel and ought to be shot but for good order and military discipline The provost Marshal and I steer between them as blandly as we can such scenes as succeed each other rush of indignant Africans a white man in woman's clothes has been seen to enter a certain house undoubtedly a spy further evidence discloses the Roman Catholic priest a peaceful little Frenchman in his professional apparel anxious female enters some sentinel has shot her cow by mistake for a rebel the United States cannot think of paying the desired thirty dollars let her go to the post quartermaster if there is none to suit her and indeed not one of them gave a drop of milk neither did hers let her wait till the next lot comes in that is all yesterday's operation gave the following total yield thirty contra bands eighteen horses, eleven cattle ten saddles and bridles and one new army wagon at this rate we shall soon be self-supporting cavalry where complaints are made of the soldiers it almost always turns out women have insulted them most grossly swearing at them and the like one old unpleasant Dutch woman came in bursting with wrath and told the whole narrative of her blameless life diversified with sobs last January I ran off two of the black people from St Mary's to Fernandina, sob then I moved down there myself and at Lake City I lost six women and a boy sob and then I stopped at Baldwin for one of the wenches to be confined I'm all here to live in a Christian country sob, sob then the blockheads, blockades at his gun-boats came and they all ran off with the blockheads sob, sob, sob and left me an old lady of forty-six obliged to work for a living a chaos of sobs without cessation but when I found out what the old sinner had said to the soldiers I rather wondered at their self-control in not throttling her meanwhile Skirmishing went on daily in the outskirts of the town there was a fight on the very first day when our men killed as before hinted a rebel surgeon which was oddly metamorphosed in the southern newspapers into theirs killing one of ours which certainly never happened every day after this they appeared in small mounted squads in the neighborhood and exchanged shots with their pickets to which the gun-boats would contribute their louder share their aim being rather embarrassed by the woods and hills we made reconnaissancees too to learn the country in different directions and were apt to be fired upon during these along the farther side of what we called the debatable land there was a line of cottages hardly superior to the negro-huts and almost all empty where the rebel pickets resorted and from whose windows they fired by degrees all these nests were broken up and destroyed though it cost some trouble to do it and the hottest skirmishers usually took place around them among these little affairs was one which we called Company K's skirmish because it brought out the fact that this company which was composed entirely of south carolina men and had never shone in drill or discipline stood near the head of the regiment for coolness and courage the defect of discipline showing itself only in their extreme unwillingness to halt when once were let loose it was at this time that the small comedy of the goose occurred an anecdote which Wendell Phillips has since made his own one of the advancing line of skirmishers usually an active fellow enough was observed to move clumsily and irregularly it soon appeared that he had encountered a fine specimen of the domestic goose which had surrendered at discretion not wishing to lose it he could yet find no way to hold it but between his legs and so he went on loading firing advancing halting always with the goose writhing and struggling and hissing at this natural pair of stocks both happily came off unwounded and retired in good order at the signal or some time after it but I have hardly a cooler thing to put on record meanwhile another fellow left the field less exultingly for after a thoroughly courageous share in the skirmish he came blubbering to his captain and said capon, make sieves and give me my cane it seemed that during some interval of the fighting he had helped himself to an armful of rebel sugar cane such as they all delighted in chewing the roman hero during another pause had confiscated the treasure whence these tears of the returning warrior I never could accustom myself to these extraordinary interminglings of manly and childish attributes a most untiring scout during this period was the chaplain of my regiment the most restless and daring spirit we had and now exulting in full liberty of action he it was who was daily permitted to stray singly where no other officer would have been allowed to go so irresistible was his appeal you know, I am only a chaplain me thinks I see our regimental saint with pistols in his belt and a ballard rifle slung on shoulder putting spurs to his steed and cantering away down some questionable wood path or returning with some tale of rebel haunt discovered or store of foraging he would track an enemy like an Indian or exhort him when apprehended like an early Christian some of our devout soldiers shook their heads sometimes over the chaplain's little eccentricities what for Mr. Chapman made a preacher for said one of them as usual transforming his title into a patronomic he's defightingest more Yankee I ever see in all my days and the criticism was very natural though they could not deny that when the hour for Sunday service came Mr. F commanded the respect and attention that hour never came however on our first Sunday in Jacksonville we were too busy and the men too scattered so the chaplain made his accustomed foray beyond the lines instead is it not Sunday slightly arsed the unregenerate lieutenant nay, quoth his reverence waxing fervid it is the day of judgement this reminds me of a raid up the river conducted by one of our senior captains an enthusiast whose grey beard and prophetic manner always took me back to the fifth monarchy men he was most successful that day bringing back horses, cattle, provisions and prisoners and one of the latter complained bitterly of being held stating that Captain R had promised his speedy liberty but that doubly official spurned the imputation of such weak blandishments in his day of triumphant retribution promise him, said he I promised him nothing but the day of judgement and periods of damnation often since I have rolled beneath my tongue this savoury and solemn sentence and I do not believe that since the days of the long parliament there has been a more resounding athema in Colonel Montgomery's hands these up river raids reached the dignity of a fine art his conceptions of foraging were rather more western and liberal than mine and on these excursions he fully indemnified himself for any undue abstinence demanded of him when in camp I remember being on the wharf with some naval officers when he came down from his first trip the steamer seemed an animated hen coop live poultry hung from the four marsh shrouds dead ones from the main mast geese hissed from the minnacle a pig raced the quarter-deck and a duck's wings were seen fluttering from a line which was want to sustain duck trousers the naval heroes mindful of their own short rations and taking high views of one's duties in conquered country approachfully as who should say shall these things be in a moment or two the returning foragers had landed Captain blank said Montgomery courteously would you allow me to send a remarkably fine turkey for your use on board Lieutenant blank said Major Corwin may I ask your acceptance of a pair of ducks for your mess never did I behold more cordial relations between army and navy than sprang into existence at these sentences so true it is as Charles Lamb says that a single present of game may diffuse kindly sentiments through a whole community these little trips were called rest there was no other rest during those ten days an immense amount of picket and fatigue duty had to be done two redouts were to be built to command the northern valley all the intervening grove which now afforded lurking ground for a daring enemy must be cleared away and a few houses must be reluctantly raised for the same purpose the fort on the left was named Fort Higginson and that built by my own regiment in return Fort Montgomery the former was necessarily a hasty work and is now I believe in ruins the latter was far more elaborately constructed on lines well traced by the fourth New Hampshire during the previous occupation it did great credit to Captain Trowbridge of my regiment formerly of the New York volunteer engineers who had charge of its construction how like a dream seems now that period of daily skirmishes and nightly watchfulness the fatigue was so constant that the days hurried by I felt the need of some occasional change of ideas and having just received from the north Mr. Brook's beautiful translation of John Paul's Titan I used to retire to my bedroom for some ten minutes every afternoon and read a chapter or two it was more refreshing than a nap and will always be to me one of the most fascinating books in the world with this added association after all what concerned me was not so much the fear of an attempt to drive us out and retake the city for that would be against the whole policy of the rebels in that region as of an effort to fulfill their threats and burn it by some nocturnal dash the most valuable buildings belonged to Union men and the upper part of the town built chiefly of resinous pine was combustible to the last degree in case of fire if the wind blew towards the river we might lose steamers and all I remember regulating my degree of disrobing by the direction of the wind if it blew from the river it was safe to make oneself quite comfortable if otherwise it was best to confirm to Suarez's idea of luxury and take off one spur so passed our busy life for ten days there were no tidings of reinforcements and I hardly knew whether I wished for them or rather I desired them as a choice of evils for our men were giving out from overwork and the recruiting excursions for which we had mainly come were hardly possible at the utmost I had asked for the addition of four companies and a light battery judge of my surprise when two infantry regiments successfully arrived I must resort to a scrap from the diary perhaps diaries are apt to be thought tedious but I would rather read a page of one whatever the events described than any more deliberate narrative it gives glimpses so much more real and vivid headquarters Jacksonville March 20th, 1863 midnight for the last 24 hours we've been sending women and children out of town in answer to a demand by flag of truce with a threat of bombardment notebook I advised them not to go and the majority declined doing so it was designed no doubt to intimidate and in our ignorance of the force actually outside and in our ignorance of the force actually outside we have had to recognise the possibility of danger and work hard at our defences at any time by going into the outskirts we can have a skirmish which is nothing but fun but when night closes in over a small weary garrison there sometimes steals into the mind like a chill that most sickening of all sensations the anxiety of a commander this was the night generally set for an attack if any though I'm pretty well satisfied that they have not strength to dare it and the worst they could probably do is to burn the town but tonight instead of enemies appear friends a devoted civic ally Judge S. and a whole Connecticut regiment the 6th under Major Meeker and though the latter are aground 12 miles below yet they enable one to breathe more freely I only wish they were black but now I have to show not only that blacks can fight but that they and white soldiers can act in harmony together that evening the enemy came up for a reconnaissance in the deepest darkness and there were alarms all night the next day the 6th Connecticut got afloat and came up river and two days after to my continued amazement arrived a part of the 8th main under Lieutenant Colonel Twitchell this increased my command to four regiments or parts of regiments half white half black skirmishing had almost ceased a defenses being tolerably complete and looking from without much more effective than they really were we were safe from any attack by a small force and hope that the enemy could not spare a large one from Charleston or Savannah all looked bright without and gave leisure for some small anxieties within it was the first time in the war so far as I know that white and black soldiers had served together on regular duty the sea was still felt towards even the offices of colored regiments and any difficult contingency would be apt to bring it out the white soldiers just from shipboard felt a natural desire to stray about the town and no attack from an enemy would be so disastrous as the slightest collision between them and the black provost guard I shudder even now to think of the train of consequences bearing on the whole course of the subsequent national events which one such mishap might have produced it is almost impossible for us now to remember in what a delicate balance then hung the whole question of negro enlistments and consequently of slavery fortunately for my own serenity I had great faith in the intrinsic power of military discipline and also knew that a common service would soon produce a mutual respect among the good soldiers and so it proved but the first 12 hours of this mixed command were to me a more anxious period than any outward alarms had created that is resort to the notebook again Jacksonville, March 22nd 1863 it is Sunday the bell is ringing for church and reverend Mr F from Beaufort is to preach this afternoon our good quarter master establishes a Sunday school for our little colony of contra bands now numbering 70 Sunday afternoon the bewildering report is confirmed and in addition to the 6th Connecticut train yesterday appears part of the 8th main the remainder with its kernel will be here tomorrow 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 Palatka 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 program what makes the thing more puzzling is that the 8th main has only brought 10 days rations so that they evidently are not here to stay and yet where they go or why they come is a puzzle meanwhile we can sleep sounder 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 the department but that General Hunter was certainly coming soon to act for himself that it had been reported in 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 the 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 coloured 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 baptised the battle of the clothesline 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 22 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 200 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 shall never 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 there was a person there I remember how picturesque the effect was when at the signal all rose again, like Roderick Durer's men 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 the ever denser woods swooped down at last in triumph in a solitary farmhouse where the family washing line had been hung out to dry this was the rebel camp it is due to Sergeant Green my invaluable guide to say that he had from the beginning discouraged any high hopes of crossing of bayonets he had early explained it was not he who had claimed to have seen tents and the rebel soldiers but one of the officers and had pointed out that our undisturbed approach was hardly reconcilable with the absence of a hostile camp so near the impression had been pressed more and more upon my own mind but it was our business to put that thing beyond a doubt probably the place may have occasionally been used for 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 vendor of those lovely woods so came we back in triumph enjoying the joke all the more because someone 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 to the wind another expedition was of more exciting character for several days before the arrival of Colonel Rust a reconnaissance had been planned in the direction of the enemy's camp and he finally consented to it being carried out by the energy of Major Corwin of the 2nd 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 parrot guns had been mounted on a hand cart 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 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 further from camp or attacking the rebel camp as my force comprised half the garrison and should the town meanwhile be attacked from any other direction it would be in great danger I shall never forget the delight of that march through the open pine barren original patches of uncertain swamp the 8th main under Lieutenant Colonel Twitchell was on the right the 6th 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 a 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 transversely for the first time I saw the two colours fairly alternate on the military chess board it had been the object of much labour 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 a 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 watch with pleasure the fresh delight of the main men who had not like the rest been previously in action and who strode rapidly on their long legs irresistibly recalling as their gaunt orthletic frames and some burnt 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 reconnaissance were reached there were still no signs of any other camp and the rebel cavalry still kept provoking before us their evident object was to lure us onto their own stronghold and had we fallen into the trap it would perhaps have resembled on a smaller scale the all-stea 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 the level railway which stretched away through the pine baron we began to see certain ominous puffs of smoke which might indeed proceed for 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 the field glass from our own slowly moving battery he seemed to move when we moved and to halt when we halted sometimes in the done smoke I caught a glimpse of something blacker raised high in the air like the threatening head of some great gliding serpent suddenly they 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 main 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 closely exposed to artillery fire a danger more exciting to the ignorant mine than any other as this very war has shown footnote take this for example the effect was electrical the rebels were the best men in Ford's command being Lieutenant Colonel show waters Californians and they are brave men they dismounted and send their horses to the rear and were undoubtedly determined upon a desperate fight and their superior numbers made them confident of success they never fought with artillery and a cannon was more terror for them than 10,000 rifles and all the wild command she's on the plains of Texas at the 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 November 25th 1864 end of footnote so I watched them anxiously fortunately there were deep trenches on each side of the railway with many stout projecting routes forming very tolerable bomb proves for those who happened to be near them the enemy's gun was a 64 pound Blakely as we afterwards found whose enormous projectile moved very slowly and gave ample time to cover in so much that while the fragments of the shell fell all around and amongst us not a man was hurt this soon gave them in the most buoyant confidence and they shouted with childish delight over every explosion 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 inventory nevertheless I rather hope 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 from approaching so near the city again but I shall never forget that Dantian 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 to 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 blately 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 his transit little knew we how soon these small entertainments would be over Colonel Montgomery had gone up the river with two companies perhaps to remain permanently and I was soon to follow on Friday March 27th I wrote home the burn site 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 further up Magnolia 35 miles or Pilatka 75 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 Stedman 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 upriver with sixteen prisoners and the fruits of a foraging implenty 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 the 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 that time in command of the post as the white soldiers frankly took it 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 coloured soldiers were quartered it was fortunate for our reputation that the newspaper accounts generally agreed in exculpating us from all share in the matter footnote the coloured regiments had nothing at all to do with it they behaved with propriety throughout Boston Journal correspondence the Negro troops took no part whatever in the perpetration of this vandalism New York Tribune correspondence we know not whether we are the 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 10th 1863 end of footnote 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 25 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 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 favourite 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 hope so buoyant and from that day to this the reasons for our recall have never been made public it was commonly attributed to pro-slavery advisers acting on the rather impulsive nature of Major General Hunter with a view to cut short the career of the coloured troops and stop their recruiting but it may have been simply the scarcity of troops in the department and the renewed conviction at headquarters that we were too few to hold the post alone the latter theory strengthened by the fact that when General Seymour reoccupied Jacksonville the following year he took with him 20,000 men instead of 1,000 and the sangrinary battle of Ola Stee found him with too few