One can hardly imagine a body of men more disconsolate than a regiment
suddenly transferred from an adventurous life in the enemy's country
to the quiet of a sheltered camp, on safe and familiar ground. The
men under my command were deeply dejected when, on a most appropriate
day,--the First of April, 1863,--they found themselves unaccountably
recalled from Florida, that region of delights which had seemed theirs
by the right of conquest. My dusky soldiers, who based their whole
walk and conversation strictly on the ancient Israelites, felt that the
prophecies were all set at naught, and that they were on the wrong
side of the Red Sea; indeed, I fear they regarded even me as a sort of
reversed Moses, whose Pisgah fronted in the wrong direction. Had they
foreseen how the next occupation of the Promised Land was destined
to result, they might have acquiesced with more of their wonted
cheerfulness. As it was, we were very glad to receive, after a few days
of discontented repose on the very ground where we had once been so
happy, an order to go out on picket at Port Royal Ferry, with the
understanding that we might remain there for some time. This picket
station was regarded as a sort of military picnic by the regiments
stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina; it meant blackberries and
oysters, wild roses and magnolias, flowery lanes instead of sandy
barrens, and a sort of guerilla existence in place of the camp routine.
To the colored soldiers especially, with their love of country life,
and their extensive personal acquaintance on the plantations, it seemed
quite like a Christmas festival. Besides, they would be in sight of the
enemy, and who knew but there might, by the blessing of Providence, be a
raid or a skirmish? If they could not remain on the St. John's River, it
was something to dwell on the Coosaw. In the end they enjoyed it as much
as they expected, and though we "went out" several times subsequently,
until it became an old story, the enjoyment never waned. And as even
the march from the camp to the picket lines was something that could not
possibly have been the same for any white regiment in the service, it is
worth while to begin at the beginning and describe it.
A regiment ordered on picket was expected to have reveille at daybreak,
and to be in line for departure by sunrise. This delighted our men, who
always took a childlike pleasure in being out of bed at any unreasonable
hour; and by the time I had emerged, the tents were nearly all struck,
and the great wagons were lumbering into camp to receive them, with
whatever else was to be transported. The first rays of the sun must
fall upon the line of these wagons, moving away across the wide
parade-ground, followed by the column of men, who would soon outstrip
them. But on the occasion which I especially describe the sun was
shrouded, and, when once upon the sandy plain, neither camp nor town nor
river could be seen in the dimness; and when I rode forward and looked
back there was only visible the long, moving, shadowy column, seeming
rather awful in its snake-like advance. There was a swaying of flags
and multitudinous weapons that might have been camels' necks for all
one could see, and the whole thing might have been a caravan upon the
desert. Soon we debouched upon the "Shell Road," the wagon-train drew
on one side into the fog, and by the time the sun appeared the music
ceased, the men took the "route step," and the fun began.
The "route step" is an abandonment of all military strictness, and
nothing is required of the men but to keep four abreast, and not lag
behind. They are not required to keep step, though, with the rhythmical
ear of our soldiers, they almost always instinctively did so; talking
and singing are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly
availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of exhilaration.
There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it
might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the
ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned
the tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments. At cross-roads and
plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one
found a friend and a greeting. "How you do, aunty?" "Huddy (how d'ye),
Budder Benjamin?" "How you find yourself dis mor-nin', Tittawisa (Sister
Louisa)?" Such saluations rang out to everybody, known or unknown. In
return, venerable, kerchiefed matrons courtesied laboriously to every
one, with an unfailing "Bress de Lord, budder." Grave little boys,
blacker than ink, shook hands with our laughing and utterly unmanageable
drummers, who greeted them with this sure word of prophecy, "Dem's de
drummers for de nex' war!" Pretty mulatto girls ogled and coquetted,
and made eyes, as Thackeray would say, at half the young fellows in the
battalion. Meantime the singing was brisk along the whole column, and
when I sometimes reined up to see them pass, the chant of each company,
entering my ear, drove out from the other ear the strain of the
preceding. Such an odd mixture of things, military and missionary, as
the successive waves of song drifted byl First, "John Brown," of course;
then, "What make old Satan for follow me so?" then, "Marching Along";
then, "Hold your light on Canaan's shore"; then, "When this cruel war
is over" (a new favorite, sung by a few); yielding presently to a grand
burst of the favorite marching song among them all, and one at which
every step instinctively quickened, so light and jubilant its rhythm,--
"All true children gwine in de wilderness,
Gwine in de wilderness, gwine in de wilderness,
True believers gwine in de wilderness,
To take away de sins ob de world,"--
ending in a "Hoigh!" after each verse,--a sort of Irish yell. For all
the songs, but especially for their own wild hymns, they constantly
improvised simple verses, with the same odd mingling,--the little facts
of to-day's march being interwoven with the depths of theological gloom,
and the same jubilant chorus annexed to all; thus,--
"We're gwin to de Ferry,
De bell done ringing;
Gwine to de landing,
De bell done ringing;
Trust, believer
O, de bell done ringing;
Satan's behind me,
De bell done ringing;
'T is a misty morning,
De bell done ringing;
O de road am sandy,
De bell done ringing;
Hell been open,
De bell done ringing";--
and so on indefinitely.
The little drum-corps kept in advance, a jolly crew, their drums slung
on their backs, and the drum-sticks perhaps balanced on their heads.
With them went the officers' servant-boys, more uproarious still, always
ready to lend their shrill treble to any song. At the head of the whole
force there walked, by some self-imposed pre-eminence, a respectable
elderly female, one of the company laundresses, whose vigorous stride we
never could quite overtake, and who had an enormous bundle balanced on
her head, while she waved in her hand, like a sword, a long-handled tin
dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music I believe no
white regiment in the service could have shown; and yet there was no
straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order
out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the
smooth and shaded road,--beneath jasmine clusters, and great pine-cones
dropping, and great bunches of misletoe still in bloom among the
branches. Arrived at the station, the scene soon became busy and more
confused; wagons were being unloaded, tents pitched, water brought, wood
cut, fires made, while the "field and staff" could take possession of
the abandoned quarters of their predecessors, and we could look round in
the lovely summer morning to "survey our empire and behold our home."
The only thoroughfare by land between Beaufort and Charleston is the
"Shell Road," a beautiful avenue, which, about nine miles from Beaufort,
strikes a ferry across the Coosaw River. War abolished the ferry, and
made the river the permanent barrier between the opposing picket lines.
For ten miles, right and left, these lines extended, marked by well-worn
footpaths, following the endless windings of the stream; and they never
varied until nearly the end of the war. Upon their maintenance depended
our whole foothold on the Sea Islands; and upon that again finally
depended the whole campaign of Sherman. But for the services of the
colored troops, which finally formed the main garrison of the Department
of the South, the Great March would never have been performed.
There was thus a region ten or twelve miles square of which I had
exclusive military command. It was level, but otherwise broken and
bewildering to the last degree. No road traversed it, properly speaking,
but the Shell Road. All the rest was a wild medley of cypress swamp,
pine barren, muddy creek, and cultivated plantation, intersected by
interminable lanes and bridle-paths, through which we must ride day
and night, and which our horses soon knew better than ourselves. The
regiment was distributed at different stations, the main force being
under my immediate command, at a plantation close by the Shell Road, two
miles from the ferry, and seven miles from Beaufort. Our first picket
duty was just at the time of the first attack on Charleston, under
Dupont and Hunter; and it was generally supposed that the Confederates
would make an effort to recapture the Sea Islands. My orders were to
watch the enemy closely, keep informed as to his position and movements,
attempt no advance, and, in case any were attempted from the other
side, to delay it as long as possible, sending instant notice to
head-quarters. As to the delay, that could be easily guaranteed. There
were causeways on the Shell Road which a single battery could
hold against a large force; and the plantations were everywhere so
intersected by hedges and dikes that they seemed expressly planned for
defence. Although creeks wound in and out everywhere, yet these were
only navigable at high tide, and at all other times were impassable
marshes. There were but few posts where the enemy were within rifle
range, and their occasional attacks at those points were soon stopped by
our enforcement of a pithy order from General Hunter, "Give them as good
as they send." So that, with every opportunity for being kept on the
alert, there was small prospect of serious danger; and all promised
an easy life, with only enough of care to make it pleasant. The picket
station was therefore always a coveted post among the regiments,
combining some undeniable importance with a kind of relaxation; and as
we were there three months on our first tour of duty, and returned there
several times afterwards, we got well acquainted with it. The whole
region always reminded me of the descriptions of La Vende'e, and I
always expected to meet Henri Larochejaquelein riding in the woods.
How can I ever describe the charm and picturesqueness of that summer
life? Our house possessed four spacious rooms and a _piazza_; around it
were grouped sheds and tents; the camp was a little way off on one side,
the negro-quarters of the plantation on the other; and all was immersed
in a dense mass of waving and murmuring locust-blossoms. The spring days
were always lovely, while the evenings were always conveniently damp; so
that we never shut the windows by day, nor omitted our cheerful fire
by night. Indoors, the main head-quarters seemed like the camp of some
party of young engineers in time of peace, only with a little female
society added, and a good many martial associations thrown in. A large,
low, dilapidated room, with an immense fireplace, and with window-panes
chiefly broken, so that the sashes were still open even when
closed,--such was our home. The walls were scrawled with capital
charcoal sketches by R. of the Fourth New Hampshire, and with a good
map of the island and its wood-paths by C. of the First Massachusetts
Cavalry. The room had the picturesqueness which comes everywhere from
the natural grouping of articles of daily use,--swords, belts, pistols,
rifles, field-glasses, spurs, canteens, gauntlets,--while wreaths of
gray moss above the windows, and a pelican's wing three feet long over
the high mantel-piece, indicated more deliberate decoration. This, and
the whole atmosphere of the place, spoke of the refining presence of
agreeable women; and it was pleasant when they held their little court
in the evening, and pleasant all day, with the different visitors who
were always streaming in and out,--officers and soldiers on various
business; turbaned women from the plantations, coming with complaints or
questionings; fugitives from the main-land to be interrogated; visitors
riding up on horseback, their hands full of jasmine and wild roses; and
the sweet sunny air all perfumed with magnolias and the Southern pine.
From the neighboring camp there was a perpetual low hum. Louder voices
and laughter re-echoed, amid the sharp sounds of the axe, from the pine
woods; and sometimes, when the relieved pickets were discharging their
pieces, there came the hollow sound of dropping rifle-shots, as in
skirmishing,--perhaps the most unmistakable and fascinating association
that war bequeaths to the memory of the ear.
Our domestic arrangements were of the oddest description. From the time
when we began housekeeping by taking down the front-door to complete
therewith a little office for the surgeon on the _piazza_, everything
seemed upside down. I slept on a shelf in the corner of the parlor,
bequeathed me by Major F., my jovial predecessor, and, if I waked at any
time, could put my head through the broken window, arouse my orderly,
and ride off to see if I could catch a picket asleep. We used to spell
the word _picquet_, because that was understood to be the correct thing,
in that Department at least; and they used to say at post head-quarters
that as soon as the officer in command of the outposts grew negligent,
and was guilty of a _k_, he was ordered in immediately. Then the
arrangements for ablution were peculiar. We fitted up a bathing-place
in a brook, which somehow got appropriated at once by the company
laundresses; but I had my revenge, for I took to bathing in the family
washtub. After all, however, the kitchen department had the advantage,
for they used my solitary napkin to wipe the mess-table. As for food, we
found it impossible to get chickens, save in the immature shape of eggs;
fresh pork was prohibited by the surgeon, and other fresh meat came
rarely. We could, indeed, hunt for wild turkeys, and even deer, but such
hunting was found only to increase the appetite, without corresponding
supply. Still we had our luxuries,--large, delicious drum-fish, and
alligator steaks,--like a more substantial fried halibut,--which might
have afforded the theme for Charles Lamb's dissertation on Roast Pig,
and by whose aid "for the first time in our lives we tested _crackling_"
The post bakery yielded admirable bread; and for vegetables and fruit we
had very poor sweet potatoes, and (in their season) an unlimited supply
of the largest blackberries. For beverage, we had the vapid milk of that
region, in which, if you let it stand, the water sinks instead of the
cream's rising; and the delicious sugar-cane syrup, which we had brought
from Florida, and which we drank at all hours. Old Floridians say that
no one is justified in drinking whiskey, while he can get cane-juice; it
is sweet and spirited, without cloying, foams like ale, and there were
little spots on the ceiling of the dining-room where our lively beverage
had popped out its cork. We kept it in a whiskey-bottle; and as whiskey
itself was absolutely prohibited among us, it was amusing to see the
surprise of our military visitors when this innocent substitute
was brought in. They usually liked it in the end, but, like the old
Frenchwoman over her glass of water, wished that it were a sin to give
it a relish. As the foaming beakers of molasses and water were handed
round, the guests would make with them the courteous little gestures
of polite imbiding, and would then quaff the beverage, some with gusto,
others with a slight afterlook of dismay. But it was a delicious and
cooling drink while it lasted; and at all events was the best and the
worst we had.
We used to have reveille at six, and breakfast about seven; then the
mounted couriers began to arrive from half a dozen different directions,
with written reports of what had happened during the night,--a
boat seen, a picket fired upon, a battery erecting. These must be
consolidated and forwarded to head-quarters, with the daily report of
the command,--so many sick, so many on detached service, and all the
rest. This was our morning newspaper, our Herald and Tribune; I never
got tired of it. Then the couriers must be furnished with countersign
and instructions, and sent off again. Then we scattered to our various
rides, all disguised as duty; one to inspect pickets, one to visit a
sick soldier, one to build a bridge or clear a road, and still another
to head-quarters for ammunition or commissary stores. Galloping through
green lanes, miles of triumphal arches of wild roses,--roses pale and
large and fragrant, mingled with great boughs of the white cornel,
fantastic masses, snowy surprises,--such were our rides, ranging from
eight to fifteen and even twenty miles. Back to a late dinner with our
various experiences, and perhaps specimens to match,--a thunder-snake,
eight feet long; a live opossum, with a young clinging to the natural
pouch; an armful of great white, scentless pond-lilies. After dinner,
to the tangled garden for rosebuds or early magnolias, whose cloying
fragrance will always bring back to me the full zest of those summer
days; then dress-parade and a little drill as the day grew cool. In the
evening, tea; and then the piazza or the fireside, as the case might
be,--chess, cards,--perhaps a little music by aid of the assistant
surgeon's melodeon, a few pages of Jean Paul's "Titan," almost my
only book, and carefully husbanded,--perhaps a mail, with its infinite
felicities. Such was our day.
Night brought its own fascinations, more solitary and profound. The
darker they were, the more clearly it was our duty to visit the
pickets. The paths that had grown so familiar by day seemed a wholly new
labyrinth by night; and every added shade of darkness seemed to shift
and complicate them all anew, till at last man's skill grew utterly
baffled, and the clew must be left to the instinct of the horse. Riding
beneath the solemn starlight, or soft, gray mist, or densest blackness,
the frogs croaking, the strange "chuckwuts-widow" droning his ominous
note above my head, the mocking-bird dreaming in music, the great
Southern fireflies rising to the tree-tops, or hovering close to the
ground like glowworms, till the horse raised his hoofs to avoid them;
through pine woods and cypress swamps, or past sullen brooks, or
white tents, or the dimly seen huts of sleeping negroes; down to the
glimmering shore, where black statues leaned against trees or stood
alert in the pathways;--never, in all the days of my life, shall I
forget the magic of those haunted nights.
We had nocturnal boat service, too, for it was a part of our
instructions to obtain all possible information about the enemy's
position; and we accordingly, as usual in such cases, incurred a great
many risks that harmed nobody, and picked up much information which did
nobody any good. The centre of these nightly reconnoissances, for a
long time, was the wreck of the George Washington, the story of whose
disaster is perhaps worth telling.
Till about the time when we went on picket, it had been the occasional
habit of the smaller gunboats to make the circuit of Port Royal
Island,--a practice which was deemed very essential to the safety of our
position, but which the Rebels effectually stopped, a few days after our
arrival, by destroying the army gunboat George Washington with a single
shot from a light battery. I was roused soon after daybreak by the
firing, and a courier soon came dashing in with the particulars.
Forwarding these hastily to Beaufort (for we had then no telegraph), I
was soon at the scene of action, five miles away. Approaching, I met on
the picket paths man after man who had escaped from the wreck across
a half-mile of almost impassable marsh. Never did I see such
objects,--some stripped to their shirts, some fully clothed, but all
having every garment literally pasted to them--bodies with mud. Across
the river, the Rebels were retiring, having done their work, but were
still shelling, from greater and greater distances, the wood through
which I rode. Arrived at the spot nearest the wreck (a point opposite to
what we called the Brickyard Station), I saw the burning vessel aground
beyond a long stretch of marsh, out of which the forlorn creatures were
still floundering. Here and there in the mud and reeds we could see the
laboring heads, slowly advancing, and could hear excruciating cries from
wounded men in the more distant depths. It was the strangest mixture of
war and Dante and Robinson Crusoe. Our energetic chaplain coming up, I
sent him with four men, under a flag of truce, to the place whence the
worst cries proceeded, while I went to another part of the marsh. During
that morning we got them all out, our last achievement being the
rescue of the pilot, an immense negro with a wooden leg,--an article so
particularly unavailable for mud travelling, that it would have almost
seemed better, as one of the men suggested, to cut the traces, and leave
it behind.
A naval gunboat, too, which had originally accompanied this vessel, and
should never have left it, now came back and took off the survivors,
though there had been several deaths from scalding and shell. It
proved that the wreck was not aground after all, but at anchor, having
foolishly lingered till after daybreak, and having thus given time
for the enemy to bring down then: guns. The first shot had struck the
boiler, and set the vessel on fire; after which the officer in command
had raised a white flag, and then escaped with his men to our shore; and
it was for this flight in the wrong direction that they were shelled
in the marshes by the Rebels. The case furnished in this respect some
parallel to that of the Kearsage and Alabama, and it was afterwards
cited, I believe, officially or unofficially, to show that the Rebels
had claimed the right to punish, in this case, the course of action
which they approved in Semmes. I know that they always asserted
thenceforward that the detachment on board the George Washington had
become rightful prisoners of war, and were justly fired upon when they
tried to escape.
This was at the tune of the first attack on Charleston, and the noise of
this cannonading spread rapidly thither, and brought four regiments to
reinforce Beaufort in a hurry, under the impression that the town was
already taken, and that they must save what remnants they could. General
Saxton, too, had made such capital plans for defending the post that
he could not bear not to have it attacked; so, while the Rebels brought
down a force to keep us from taking the guns off the wreck, I was also
supplied with a section or two of regular artillery, and some additional
infantry, with which to keep them from it; and we tried to "make believe
very hard," and rival the Charleston expedition on our own island.
Indeed, our affair came to about as much,--nearly nothing,--and lasted
decidedly longer; for both sides nibbled away at the guns, by night, for
weeks afterward, though I believe the mud finally got them,--at least,
we did not. We tried in vain to get the use of a steamboat or floating
derrick of any kind; for it needed more mechanical ingenuity than we
possessed to transfer anything so heavy to our small boats by night,
while by day we did not go near the wreck in anything larger than a
"dug-out."
One of these nocturnal visits to the wreck I recall with peculiar gusto,
because it brought back that contest with catarrh and coughing among my
own warriors which had so ludicrously beset me in Florida. It was always
fascinating to be on those forbidden waters by night, stealing out with
muffled oars through the creeks and reeds, our eyes always strained
for other voyagers, our ears listening breathlessly to all the marsh
sounds,--blackflsh splashing, and little wakened reed-birds that fled
wailing away over the dim river, equally safe on either side. But it
always appeared to the watchful senses that we were making noise enough
to be heard at Fort Sumter; and somehow the victims of catarrh seemed
always the most eager for any enterprise requiring peculiar caution.
In this case I thought I had sifted them before-hand; but as soon as we
were afloat, one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon
him in exasperation. He saw his danger, and meekly said, "I won't cough,
Gunnel!" and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his
gun, with never a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat
developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a
picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and
embarked a substitute, who after the first five minutes absolutely
coughed louder than both the others united. Handkerchiefs, blankets,
over-coats, suffocation in its direst forms, were tried in vain, but
apparently the Rebel pickets slept through it all, and we exploded the
wreck in safety. I think they were asleep, for certainly across the
level marshes there came a nasal sound, as of the "Con-thieveracy" in
its slumbers. It may have been a bull-frog, but it sounded like a human
snore.
Picket life was of course the place to feel the charm of natural beauty
on the Sea Islands. We had a world of profuse and tangled vegetation
around us, such as would have been a dream of delight to me, but for the
constant sense of responsibility and care which came between. Amid
this preoccupation, Nature seemed but a mirage, and not the close and
intimate associate I had before known. I pressed no flowers, collected
no insects or birds' eggs, made no notes on natural objects, reversing
in these respects all previous habits. Yet now, in the retrospect, there
seems to have been infused into me through every pore the voluptuous
charm of the season and the place; and the slightest corresponding
sound or odor now calls back the memory of those delicious days. Being
afterwards on picket at almost every season, I tasted the sensations of
all; and though I hardly then thought of such a result, the associations
of beauty will remain forever.
In February, for instance,--though this was during a later period of
picket service,--the woods were usually draped with that "net of shining
haze" which marks our Northern May; and the house was embowered in
wild-plum-blossoms, small, white, profuse, and tenanted by murmuring
bees. There were peach-blossoms, too, and the yellow jasmine was opening
its multitudinous buds, climbing over tall trees, and waving from bough
to bough. There were fresh young ferns and white bloodroot in the edges
of woods, matched by snowdrops in the garden, beneath budded myrtle
and _Petisporum_. In this wilderness the birds were busy; the two
main songsters being the mocking-bird and the cardinal-grosbeak, which
monopolized all the parts of our more varied Northern orchestra save
the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina seemed unattempted
except by some stray blue-bird. Jays were as loud and busy as at the
North in autumn; there were sparrows and wrens; and sometimes I noticed
the shy and whimsical chewink.
From this early spring-time onward, there seemed no great difference in
atmospheric sensations, and only a succession of bloom. After two months
one's notions of the season grew bewildered, just as very early rising
bewilders the day. In the army one is perhaps roused after a bivouac,
marches before daybreak, halts, fights, somebody is killed, a long
day's life has been lived, and after all it is not seven o'clock, and
breakfast is not ready. So when we had lived in summer so long as hardly
to remember winter, it suddenly occurred to us that it was not yet June.
One escapes at the South that mixture of hunger and avarice which is
felt in the Northern summer, counting each hour's joy with the sad
consciousness that an hour is gone. The compensating loss is in missing
those soft, sweet, liquid sensations of the Northern spring, that burst
of life and joy, those days of heaven that even April brings; and this
absence of childhood in the year creates a feeling of hardness in the
season, like that I have suggested in the melody of the Southern
birds. It seemed to me also that the woods had not those pure, clean,
_innocent_ odors which so abound in the New England forest in
early spring; but there was something luscious, voluptuous, almost
oppressively fragrant about the magnolias, as if they belonged not to
Hebe, but to Magdalen.
Such immense and lustrous butterflies I had never seen but in dreams;
and not even dreams had prepared me for sand-flies. Almost too small to
be seen, they inflicted a bite which appeared larger than themselves,--a
positive wound, more torturing than that of a mosquito, and leaving
more annoyance behind. These tormentors elevated dress-parade into the
dignity of a military engagement. I had to stand motionless, with my
head a mere nebula of winged atoms, while tears rolled profusely down my
face, from mere muscular irritation. Had I stirred a finger, the whole
battalion would have been slapping its cheeks. Such enemies were,
however, a valuable aid to discipline, on the whole, as they abounded
in the guard-house, and made that institution an object of unusual
abhorrence among the men.
The presence of ladies and the homelike air of everything, made the
picket station a very popular resort while we were there. It was the
one agreeable ride from Beaufort, and we often had a dozen people
unexpectedly to dinner. On such occasions there was sometimes mounting
in hot haste, and an eager search among the outlying plantations for
additional chickens and eggs, or through the company kitchens for some
of those villanous tin cans which everywhere marked the progress of our
army. In those cans, so far as my observation went, all fruits
relapsed into a common acidulation, and all meats into a similarity of
tastelessness; while the "condensed milk" was best described by the men,
who often unconsciously stumbled on a better joke than they knew, and
always spoke of it as _condemned_ milk.
We had our own excursions too,--to the Barnwell plantations, with
their beautiful avenues and great live-oaks, the perfection of Southern
beauty,--to Hall's Island, debatable ground, close under the
enemy's fire, where half-wild cattle were to be shot, under military
precautions, like Scottish moss-trooping,--or to the ferry, where it
was fascinating to the female mind to scan the Rebel pickets through
a field-glass. Our horses liked the by-ways far better than the level
hardness of the Shell Road, especially those we had brought from
Florida, which enjoyed the wilderness as if they had belonged to
Marion's men. They delighted to feel the long sedge brush their flanks,
or to gallop down the narrow wood-paths, leaping the fallen trees, and
scaring the bright little lizards which shot across our track like live
rays broken from the sunbeams. We had an abundance of horses, mostly
captured and left in our hands by some convenient delay of the post
quartermaster. We had also two side-saddles, which, not being munitions
of war, could not properly (as we explained) be transferred like other
captured articles to the general stock; otherwise the P. Q. M. (a
married man) would have showed no unnecessary delay in their case.
For miscellaneous accommodation was there not an ambulance,--that most
inestimable of army conveniences, equally ready to carry the merry to
a feast or the wounded from a fray. "Ambulance" was one of those words,
rather numerous, which Ethiopian lips were not framed by Nature to
articulate. Only the highest stages of colored culture could compass it;
on the tongue of the many it was transformed mystically as "amulet," or
ambitiously as "epaulet," or in culinary fashion as "omelet." But it was
our experience that an ambulance under any name jolted equally hard.
Besides these divertisements, we had more laborious vocations,--a good
deal of fatigue, and genuine though small alarms. The men went on duty
every third day at furthest, and the officers nearly as often,--most
of the tours of duty lasting twenty-four hours, though the stream was
considered to watch itself tolerably well by daylight. This kind of
responsibility suited the men; and we had already found, as the whole
army afterwards acknowledged, that the constitutional watchfulness and
distrustfulness of the colored race made them admirable sentinels. Soon
after we went on picket, the commanding general sent an aid, with a
cavalry escort, to visit all the stations, without my knowledge. They
spent the whole night, and the officer reported that he could not get
within thirty yards of any post without a challenge. This was a pleasant
assurance for me; since our position seemed so secure, compared with
Jacksonville, that I had feared some relaxation of vigilance, while yet
the safety of all depended on our thorough discharge of duty.
Jacksonville had also seasoned the men so well that they were no longer
nervous, and did not waste much powder on false alarms. The Rebels made
no formal attacks, and rarely attempted to capture pickets. Sometimes
they came stealing through the creeks in "dugouts," as we did on their
side of the water, and occasionally an officer of ours was fired upon
while making his rounds by night. Often some boat or scow would go
adrift, and sometimes a mere dark mass of river-weed would be floated by
the tide past the successive stations, eliciting a challenge and perhaps
a shot from each. I remember the vivid way in which one of the men
stated to his officer the manner in which a faithful picket should do
his duty, after challenging, in case a boat came in sight. "Fus' ting I
shoot, and den I shoot, and den I shoot again. Den I creep-creep up near
de boat, and see who dey in 'em; and s'pose anybody pop up he head, den
I shoot again. S'pose I fire my forty rounds. I tink he hear at de
camp and send more mans,"--which seemed a reasonable presumption. This
soldier's name was Paul Jones, a daring fellow, quite worthy of his
namesake.
In time, however, they learned quieter methods, and would wade far out
in the water, there standing motionless at last, hoping to surround and
capture these floating boats, though, to their great disappointment,
the prize usually proved empty. On one occasion they tried a still
profounder strategy; for an officer visiting the pickets after midnight,
and hearing in the stillness a portentous snore from the end of the
causeway (our most important station), straightway hurried to the point
of danger, with wrath in his soul. But the sergeant of the squad came
out to meet him, imploring silence, and explaining that they had seen or
suspected a boat hovering near, and were feigning sleep in order to lure
and capture those who would entrap them.
The one military performance at the picket station of which my men were
utterly intolerant was an occasional flag of truce, for which this
was the appointed locality. These farces, for which it was our duty
to furnish the stock actors, always struck them as being utterly
despicable, and unworthy the serious business of war. They felt, I
suppose, what Mr. Pickwick felt, when he heard his counsel remark to the
counsel for the plaintiff, that it was a very fine morning. It goaded
their souls to see the young officers from the two opposing armies
salute each other courteously, and interchange cigars. They despised the
object of such negotiations, which was usually to send over to the enemy
some family of Rebel women who had made themselves quite intolerable on
our side, but were not above collecting a subscription among the Union
officers, before departure, to replenish their wardrobes. The men never
showed disrespect to these women by word or deed, but they hated them
from the bottom of their souls. Besides, there was a grievance behind
all this.
The Rebel order remained unrevoked which consigned the new colored
troops and their officers to a felon's death, if captured; and we all
felt that we fought with ropes round our necks. "Dere's no flags ob
truce for us," the men would contemptuously say. "When de Secesh fight
de _Fus' Souf_" (First South Carolina), "he fight in earnest." Indeed,
I myself took it as rather a compliment when the commander on the
other side--though an old acquaintance of mine in Massachusetts and
in Kansas--at first refused to negotiate through me or my officers,--a
refusal which was kept up, greatly to the enemy's inconvenience, until
our men finally captured some of the opposing pickets, and their friends
had to waive all scruples in order to send them supplies. After this
there was no trouble, and I think that the first Rebel officer in South
Carolina who officially met any officer of colored troops under a
flag of truce was Captain John C. Calhoun. In Florida we had been so
recognized long before; but that was when they wished to frighten us out
of Jacksonville.
Such was our life on picket at Port Royal,--a thing whose memory is now
fast melting into such stuff as dreams are made of. We stayed there more
than two months at that tune; the first attack on Charleston exploded
with one puff, and had its end; General Hunter was ordered North,
and the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead; and in June, when the
blackberries were all eaten, we were summoned, nothing loath, to other
scenes and encampments new.