RECRUITING AND ORGANIZING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
"Private Miles O'Reilly" was the _nom de plume_ of a talented literary
gentleman of the city of New York, who wrote much in humorous prose and
verse. His real name was Charles G. Halpine. After an honorable service
in the war, rising to high rank, he was elected Register of New York,
and died suddenly while in office, in 1868. The following sketches from
his pen, published during the war, give an account of matters connected
with the recruiting and organizing of negro troops in South Carolina,
and are quoted here as interesting historical facts connected with the
subject:
"Black troops are now an established success, and
hereafter--while the race can furnish enough able-bodied
males--the probability would seem that one-half the
permanent naval and military forces of the United States
will be drawn from this material, under the guidance and
control of the white officers. To-day there is much
competition among the field and staff officers of our white
volunteers--more especially in those regiments about being
disbanded--to obtain commission of like or even lower grades
in the colored regiments of Uncle Sam. General Casey's board
of examination cannot keep in session long enough, nor
dismiss incompetent aspirants quick enough, to keep down the
vast throngs of veterans, with and without shoulder-straps,
who are now seeking various grades of command in the colored
brigades of the Union. Over this result all intelligent men
will rejoice,--the privilege of being either killed or
wounded in battle, or stricken down by the disease, toil and
privations incident to the life of a marching soldier, not
belonging to that class of prerogative for the exclusive
enjoyment of which men of sense, and with higher careers
open to them, will long contend. Looking back, however, but
a few years, to the organization of the first regiment of
black troops in the departments of the South, what a change
in public opinion are we compelled to recognize! In sober
verity, war is not only the sternest, but the quickest, of
all teachers; and contrasting the Then and Now of our negro
regiments, as we propose to do in this sketch, the contrast
will forcibly recall Galileo's obdurate assertion that 'the
world still moves.'
"Be it known, then, that the first regiment of black troops
raised in our recent war, was raised in the Spring of 1862
by the commanding general of the department of the South, of
his own motion, and without any direct authority of law,
order, or even sanction from the President, the Secretary of
War, or our House of Congress. It was done by General Hunter
as 'a military necessity' under very peculiar circumstances,
to be detailed hereafter; and although repudiated at first
by the Government as were so many other measures originated
in the same quarter, it was finally adopted as the settled
policy of the country and of our military system; as have
likewise since been adopted, all the other original measures
for which these officers, at the time of their first
announcement, was made to suffer both official rebuke and
the violently vituperative denunciation of more than
one-half the Northern press.
"In the Spring of 1862, General Hunter, finding himself with
less than eleven thousand men under his command, and charged
with the duty of holding the whole tortuous and broken
seacoast of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, had applied
often, and in vain, to the authorities at Washington for
reinforcements. All the troops that could be gathered in the
North were less than sufficient for the continuous drain of
General McClellan's great operations against the enemy's
capital; and the reiterated answer of the War Department
was: 'You must get along as best you can. Not a man from the
North can be spared.'
"On the mainland of three States nominally forming the
Department of the South, the flag of the Union had no
permanent foothold, save at Fernandina, St. Augustine, and
some few unimportant points along the Florida coast. It was
on the Sea-islands of Georgia and South Carolina that our
troops were stationed, and continually engaged in
fortifying,--the enemy being everywhere visible, and in
force, across the narrow creeks dividing us from the
mainland; and in various raids they came across to our
islands, and we drove them back to the mainland, and up
their creeks, with a few gunboats to help us--being the
order of the day; yea, and yet oftener, of the night.
"No reinforcements to be had from the North; vast fatigue
duties in throwing up earthworks imposed on our insufficient
garrison; the enemy continually increasing both in insolence
and numbers; our only success the capture of Fort Pulaski,
sealing up of Savannah; and this victory offset, if not
fully counter-balanced, by many minor gains of the enemy;
this was about the condition of affairs as seen from the
headquarters fronting Port Royal bay, when General Hunter
one fine morning, with twirling glasses, puckered lips, and
dilated nostrils, (he had just received another
'don't-bother-us-for-reinforcements' dispatch from
Washington) announced his intention of 'forming a negro
regiment, and compelling every able-bodied black man in the
department to fight for the freedom which could not but be
the issue of our war.'
"This resolution being taken, was immediately acted upon
with vigor, the General causing all the necessary orders to
be issued, and taking upon himself, as his private burden,
the responsibility for all the irregular issues of arms,
clothing, equipments, and rations involved in collecting and
organizing the first experimental negro regiment. The men he
intended to pay, at first, by placing them as laborers on
the pay-roll of the Chief Quartermaster; but it was his hope
that the obvious necessity and wisdom of the measure he had
thus presumed to adopt without authority, would secure for
it the immediate approval of the higher authorities, and the
necessary orders to cover the required pay and supply-issue
of the force he had in contemplation. If his course should
be endorsed by the War Department, well and good; if it were
not so indorsed, why, he had enough property of his own to
pay back to the Government all he was irregularly expending
in this experiment.
"But now, on the very threshold of this novel enterprise,
came the first--and it was not a trivial--difficulty. Where
could experienced officers be found for such an
organization? 'What! command niggers?' was the reply--if
possible more amazed than scornful--of nearly every
competent young lieutenant or captain of volunteers to whom
the suggestion of commanding this class of troops was made.
'Never mind,' said Hunter, when this trouble was brought to
his notice; 'the fools or bigots who refuse are enough
punished by their refusal. Before two years they will be
competing eagerly for the commission they now reject.'
Straightly there was issued a circular to all commanding
officers in the department, directing them to announce to
the non-commissioned officers and men of their respective
commands that commissions in the 'South Carolina Regiment of
Colored Infantry,' would be given to all deserving and
reputable sergeants, corporals; and men who would appear at
department headquarters, and prove able to pass an
examination in the manual and tactics before a Band of
Examiners, which was organized in a general order of current
date. Capt. Arthur M. Kenzie, of Chicago, aid-de-camp,--now
of Hancock's Veterans Reserve Corps--was detailed as Colonel
of the regiment, giving place, subsequently, in consequence
of injured health, to the present Brig.-Gen. James D.
Fessenden, then a captain in the Berdan Sharpshooters,
though detailed as acting aid-de-camp on Gen. Hunter's
staff. Capt. Kenzie, we may add, was Gen. Hunter's nephew,
and his appointment as Colonel was made partly to prove--so
violent was then the prejudice against negro troops--that
the Commanding General asks nothing of them which he was not
willing that one of his own flesh and blood should be
engaged in.
"The work was now fairly in progress, but the barriers of
prejudice were not to be lightly overthrown.
Non-commissioned officers and men of the right stamp, and
able to pass the examination requisite, were scarce
articles. Ten had the hardihood or moral courage to face
the screaming, riotous ridicule of their late associates in
the white regiments. We remember one very striking instance
in point, which we shall give as a sample of the whole.
"Our friend Mr. Charles F. Briggs, of this city, so well
known in literary circles, had a nephew enlisted in that
excellent regiment the 48th New York, then garrisoning Fort
Pulaski and the works of Tybee Island. This youngster had
raised himself by gallantry and good conduct to be a
non-commissioned officer; and Mr. Briggs was anxious that he
should be commissioned, according to his capacities, in the
colored troops then being raised. The lad was sent for,
passed his examination with credit, and was immediately
offered a first lieutenancy, with the promise of being made
captain when his company should be filled up to the required
standard,--probably within ten days.
"The inchoate first-lieutenant was in ecstasies; a gentleman
by birth and education, he longed for the shoulder-straps.
He appeared joyously grateful; and only wanted leave to run
up to Fort Pulaski for the purpose of collecting his traps,
taking leave of his former comrades, and procuring his
discharge-papers from Col. Barton. Two days after that came
a note to the department headquarters respectfully declining
the commission! He had been laughed and jeered out of
accepting a captaincy by his comrades; and this--though we
remember it more accurately from our correspondence with Mr.
Briggs--was but one of many scores of precisely similar
cases.
"At length, however, officers were found; the ranks were
filled; the men learned with uncommon quickness, having the
imitativeness of so many monkeys apparently, and such
excellent ears for music that all evolutions seemed to come
to them by nature. At once, despite all hostile influence,
the negro regiment became one of the lions of the South; and
strangers visiting the department, crowded out eagerly to
see its evening parades and Sunday-morning inspection. By a
strange coincidence, its camp was pitched on the lawn and
around the mansion of Gen. Drayton, who commanded the rebel
works guarding Hilton Head, Port Royal and Beaufort, when
the same were first captured by the joint naval and military
operations under Admiral DuPont and General Timothy W.
Sherman,--General Drayton's brother, Captain Drayton of our
navy, having command of one of the best vessels in the
attacking squadron; as he subsequently took part in the
first iron-clad attack on Fort Sumpter.
"Meantime, however, the War Department gave no sign, and the
oracles of the Adjutant-General's office were dumb as the
statue of the Sphynx. Reports of the organization of the
First South Carolina infantry were duly forwarded to army
headquarters; but evoked no comment, either of approval or
rebuke. Letters detailing what had been done, and the reason
for doing it; asking instructions, and to have commissions
duly issued to the officers selected; appeals that the
department paymaster should be instructed to pay these negro
troops like other soldiers; demands that the Government
should either shoulder the responsibility of sustaining the
organization, or give such orders as would absolve Gen.
Hunter from the responsibility of backing out from an
experiment which he believed to be essential to the
salvation of the country,--all these appeals to Washington
proved in vain; for the oracles still remained profoundly
silent, probably waiting to see how public opinion and the
politicians would receive this daring innovation.
[Illustration: FORTIFICATIONS AT HILTON HEAD.
Gen'l. Hunter's black regiment in the distance.]
"At length one evening a special dispatch steamer plowed her
way over the bar, and a perspiring messenger delivered into
Gen. Hunter's hands a special despatch from the War
Department, 'requiring immediate answer.' The General was
just about mounting his horse for his evening ride along the
picket-line, when this portentous missive was brought under
his notice. Hastily opening it, he first looked grave, then
began to smile, and finally burst into peals of
irrepressible laughter, such as were rarely heard from
'Black David,' his old army name. Never was the General
seen, before or since, in such good spirits; he literally
was unable to speak from constant interruption of laughter;
and all his Adjutant-General could gather from him was:
'That he would not part with the document in his hand for
fifty thousand dollars.'
"At length he passed over the dispatch to his Chief of
Staff, who on reading it, and re-reading it, could find in
its texts but little apparent cause for merriment. It was a
grave demand from the War Department for information in
regard to our negro regiment--the demand being based on a
certain resolution introduced by the Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of
Kentucky, asking for specific information on the point, in a
tone clearly not friendly. These resolutions had been
adopted by Congress; and as Hunter was without authority for
any of his actions in this case, it seemed to his then not
cheerful Adjutant-General that the documents in his hands
were the reverse of hilarious.
"Still Hunter was in extravagant spirits as he rode along,
his laughter startling the squirrels in the dense pine
woods, and every attempt that he made to explain himself
being again and again interrupted by renewed peals of
inextinguishable mirth. 'The fools!' he at length managed to
say; 'that old fool has just given me the very chance I was
growing sick for! The War Department has refused to notice
my black regiment; but now, in reply to this resolution, I
can lay the matter before the country, and force the
authorities either to adopt my negroes or to disband them.'
He then rapidly sketched out the kind of reply he wished to
have prepared; and, with the first ten words of his
explanation, the full force of the cause he had for laughter
became apparent. Never did a General and his Chief-of-Staff,
in a more unseemly state of cachinnation, ride along a
picket-line. At every new phase of the subject it presented
new features of the ludicrous; and though the reply at this
late date may have lost much of the drollery which then it
wore, it is a serio-comic document of as much vital
importance in the moral history of our late contest as any
that can be found in the archives under the care of Gen. E.
D. Townsend. It was received late Sunday evening, and was
answered very late that night, in order to be in time for
the steamer _Arago_, which sailed at daylight next
morning,--the dispatch-steamer which brought the request
'for immediate information' having sustained some injuries
which prevented an immediate return. It was written after
midnight, we may add, in a tornado of thunder and tempest
such as has rarely been known even on that tornado-stricken
coast; but loud as were the peals and vivid the flashes of
heaven's artillery, there were at least two persons within
the lines on Hilton Head who were laughing far too noisily
themselves to pay any heed to external clamors. The reply
thus concocted and sent, from an uncorrected manuscript copy
now in our possession, ran as follows:
"HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH,
_Hilton Head, S. C._, June, 1862.
"To the HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
"SIR:--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a
communication from the Adjutant-General of the Army, dated
June 13, 1862, requesting me to furnish you with the
information necessary to answer certain Resolutions
introduced in the House of Representatives June 9, 1862, on
motion of the Hon. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky; their
substance being to enquire:
"1st--Whether I had organized, or was organizing, a regiment
of 'fugitive slaves' in this department.
"2d--Whether any authority had been given to me from the War
Department for such an organization; and
"3rd--Whether I had been furnished, by order of the War
Department, with clothing, uniforms, arms, equipments, and
so forth, for such a force?
"Only having received the letter at a late hour this
evening, I urge forward my answer in time for the steamer
sailing to-morrow morning,--this haste preventing me from
entering, as minutely as I could wish, upon many points of
detail, such as the paramount importance of the subject
would seem to call for. But, in view of the near termination
of the present session of Congress, and the wide-spread
interest which must have been awakened by Mr. Wickliffe's
resolutions, I prefer sending even this imperfect answer to
waiting the period necessary for the collection of fuller
and more comprehensive data.
"To the first question, therefore, I reply: That no regiment
of 'fugitive slaves' has been, or is being, organized in
this department. There is, however, a fine regiment of loyal
persons whose late masters are fugitive rebels--men who
everywhere fly before the appearance of the national flag,
leaving their loyal and unhappy servants behind them, to
shift, as best they can, for themselves. So far, indeed, are
the loyal persons composing the regiment from seeking to
evade the presence of their late owners, that they are now,
one and all, endeavoring with commendable zeal to acquire
the drill and discipline requisite to place them in a
position to go in full and effective pursuit of their
fugacious and traitorous proprietors.
"To the second question, I have the honor to answer that the
instructions given to Brig.-Gen. T. W. Sherman by the Hon.
Simon Cameron, late Secretary of War, and turned over to me,
by succession, for my guidance, do distinctly authorize me
to employ 'all loyal persons offering their service in
defence of the Union, and for the suppression of this
rebellion,' in any manner I may see fit, or that
circumstances may call for. There is no restriction as to
the character or color of the persons to be employed, or the
nature of the employment--whether civil or military--in
which their services may be used. I conclude, therefore,
that I have been authorized to enlist 'fugitive slaves' as
soldiers, could any such fugitives be found in this
department. No such characters, however, have yet appeared
within view of our most advanced pickets,--the loyal negroes
everywhere remaining on their plantations to welcome us, aid
us, and supply us with food, labor and information. It is
the masters who have in every instance been the 'fugitives,'
running away from loyal slaves as well as loyal soldiers;
and these, as yet, we have only partially been able to
see--chiefly their heads over ramparts, or dodging behind
trees, rifles in hand, in the extreme distance. In the
absence of any 'fugitive master law,' the deserted slaves
would be wholly without remedy had not the crime of treason
given them right to pursue, capture and bring those persons
of whose benignant protection they have been thus suddenly
and cruelly bereft.
"To the third interrogatory, it is my painful duty to reply
that I have never received any specific authority for issue
of clothing, uniforms, arms, equipments and so forth, to the
troops in question,--my general instructions from Mr.
Cameron, to employ them in any manner I might find
necessary, and the military exigencies of the department and
the country, being my only, but I trust, sufficient
justification. Neither have I had any specific authority for
supplying these persons with shovels, spades, and pickaxes,
when employing them as laborers; nor with boats and oars,
when using them as lighter-men; but these are not points
included in Mr. Wickliffe's resolution. To me it seemed that
liberty to employ men in any particular capacity implied and
carried with it liberty, also, to supply them with the
necessary tools; and, acting upon this faith, I have
clothed, equiped, and armed the only loyal regiment yet
raised in South Carolina, Georgia or Florida.
"I must say, in vindication of my own conduct, that, had it
not been for the many other diversified and imperative
claims on my time and attention, a much more satisfactory
result might to have been achieved; and that, in place of
only one regiment, as at present, at least five or six
well-drilled, and thoroughly acclimated regiments should, by
this time, have been added to the loyal forces of the Union.
"The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made
it, has been a complete and even marvellous success. They
are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic; displaying
great natural capacities in acquiring the duties of the
soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the
field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous
opinion of the officers who have had charge of them that, in
the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will
prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal to the similar
regiments so long and successfully used by the British
authorities in the West India Islands.
"In conclusion, I would say, it is my hope--there appearing
no possibility of other reinforcements, owing to the
exigencies of the campaign in the Peninsula--to have
organized by the end of next fall, and be able to present to
the government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these
hardy and devoted soldiers.
"Trusting that this letter may be made part of your answer
to Mr. Wickliffe's resolutions, I have the honor to be,
Very respectfully your most obedient servant,
DAVID HUNTER, _Maj.-Gen. Commanding._"
"This missive was duly sent, with many misgivings that it
would not get through the routine of the War Department in
time to be laid before Congress previous to the adjournment
of that honorable body which was then imminent. There were
fears; too, that the Secretary of War might think it not
sufficiently respectful, or serious in its tone; but such
apprehensions proved unfounded. The moment it was received
and read in the War Department, it was hurried down to the
House, and delivered, _ore retundo_, from the clerk's desk.
"Here its effects were magical. The clerk could scarcely
read it with decorum; nor could half his words be heard
amidst the universal peals of laughter in which both
Democrats and Republicans appeared to vie as to which should
be the more noisy. Mr. Wickliffe, who only entered during
the reading of the latter half of the document, rose to his
feet in a frenzy of indignation, complaining that the reply,
of which he had only heard some portion, was an insult to
the dignity of the House, and should be severely noticed.
The more he raved and gesticulated, the more irrepressibly
did his colleagues, on both sides of the slavery question,
scream and laugh; until finally, the merriment reached its
climax on a motion made by some member--Schuyler Colfax, if
we remember rightly--that 'as the document appeared to
please the honorable gentleman from Kentucky so much, and as
he had not heard the whole of it the Clerk be now requested
to read the whole again'--a motion which was instantaneously
carried amid such an uproar of universal merriment and
applause as the frescoed walls of the chamber have seldom
heard, either before or since. It was the great joke of the
day, and coming at a moment of universal gloom in the public
mind, was seized upon by the whole loyal press of the
country as a kind of politico-military champaign cocktail.
"This set that question at rest forever; and not long after,
the proper authorities saw fit to authorize the employment
of 'fifty thousand able-bodied blacks for labor in the
Quartermaster's Department,' and the arming and drilling as
soldiers of five thousand of these, but for the sole purpose
of 'protecting the women and children of their
fellow-laborers who might be absent from home in the public
service.'
"Here we have another instance of the reluctance with which
the National Government took up this idea of employing
negroes as soldiers; a resolution, we may add, to which they
were only finally compelled by General Hunter's disbandment
of his original regiment, and the storm of public
indignation which followed that act.
"Nothing could have been happier in its effect upon the
public mind than Gen. Hunter's reply to Mr. Wickliffe, of
Kentucky, given in our last. It produced a general broad
grin throughout the country, and the advocate who can set
his jury laughing rarely loses his cause. It also
strengthened the spinal column of the Government in a very
marked degree; although not yet up to the point of fully
endorsing and accepting this daring experiment.
"Meantime the civil authorities of course got wind of what
was going on,--Mr. Henry J. Windsor, special correspondent
of the New York _Times_, in the Department of the south,
having devoted several very graphic and widely-copied
letters to a picture of that new thing under the sun,
'Hunter's negro regiment.'
"Of course the chivalry of the rebellion were incensed
beyond measure at this last Yankee outrage upon Southern
rights. Their papers teemed with vindictive articles against
the commanding general who had dared to initiate such a
novelty. The Savannah _Republican_, in particular,
denouncing Hunter as 'the cool-blooded abolition miscreant
who, from his headquarters at Hilton Head, is engaged in
executing the bloody and savage behest of the imperial
gorilla who, from his throne of human bones at Washington,
rules, reigns and riots over the destinies of the brutish
and degraded North.'
"Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means gave content to
the outraged feeling of the chivalry. They therefore sent a
formal demand to our Government for information as to
whether Gen. Hunter, in organizing his regiment of
emancipated slaves, had acted under the authority of our War
Department, or whether the villany was of his own
conception. If he had acted under orders, why then terrible
measures of fierce retaliation against the whole Yankee
nation were to be adopted; but if, _per contra_, the
iniquity were of his own motion and without the sanction of
our Government, then the foreshadowed retribution should be
made to fall only on Hunter and his officers.
[Illustration: BUILDING ROADS]
"To this demand, with its alternative of threats, President
Lincoln was in no mood to make any definitive reply. In fact
no reply at all was sent, for, as yet, the most far-seeing
political augurs could not determine whether the bird seen
in the sky of the Southern Department would prove an eagle
or a buzzard. Public opinion was not formed upon the
subject, though rapidly forming. There were millions who
agreed with Hunter in believing that 'that the black man
should be made to fight for the freedom which could not but
be the issue of our war;' and then they were outraged at the
prospect of allowing black men to be killed or maimed in
company with our nobler whites.
"Failing to obtain any reply therefor, from the authorities
at Washington, the Richmond people determined to pour out
all their vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of this
last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith there was issued from
the rebel War Department a General Order number 60, we
believe, of the series of 1862--reciting that 'as the
government of the U. S. had refused to answer whether it
authorized the raising of a black regiment by Gen. Hunter or
not' said General, his staff, and all officers under his
command who had directly or indirectly participated in the
unclean thing, should hereafter be outlaws not covered by
the laws of war; but to be executed as felons for the crimes
of 'inciting negro insurrections wherever caught.'
"This order reached the ears of the parties mainly
interested just as Gen. Hunter was called to Washington,
ostensibly for consultation on public business; but really
on the motion of certain prominent speculators in marine
transportation, with those 'big things,' in Port Royal
harbor,--and they were enormous--with which the General had
seen fit to interfere. These frauds, however, will form a
very fruitful and pregnant theme for some future chapters.
At present our business is with the slow but certain growth
in the public mind of this idea of allowing some black men
to be killed in the late war, and not continuing to arrogate
death and mutilation by projectiles and bayonets as an
exclusive privilege for our own beloved white race.
"No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this special duty
at Washington, than he was ordered back to the South, our
Government still taking no notice of the order of outlawry
against him issued by the rebel Secretary of War. He and his
officers were thus sent back to engage, with extremely
insufficient forces, in an enterprise of no common
difficulty, and with an agreeable sentence of _sus. per
col._, if captured, hanging over their devoted heads!
"Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General, that he should
either demand the special revocation of that order, or
announce to the rebel War Department that our Government has
adopted your negro-regiment policy as its own--which would
be the same thing.
"It was partly on this hint that Hunter wrote the following
letter to Jefferson Davis,--a letter subsequently suppressed
and never sent, owing to influences which the writer of this
article does not feel himself as yet at liberty to
reveal,--further than to say that Mr. Stanton knew nothing
of the matter. Davis and Hunter, we may add, had been very
old and intimate friends, until divided, some years previous
to our late war, by differences on the slavery question.
Davis had for many years been adjutant of the 1st U. S.
Dragoons, of which Hunter had been Captain Commanding; and a
relationship of very close friendship had existed between
their respective families. It was this thorough knowledge of
his man, perhaps, which gave peculiar bitterness to Hunter's
pen; and the letter is otherwise remarkable as a prophecy,
or preordainment of that precise policy which Pres't.
Johnson has so frequently announced, and reiterated since
Mr. Lincoln's death. It ran--with some few omissions, no
longer pertinent or of public interest--as follows:
"TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, TITULAR PRESIDENT OF THE SO-CALLED
CONFEDERATE STATES.
"SIR:--While recently in command of the Department of the
South, in accordance with the laws of the war and the
dictates of common sense, I organized and caused to be
drilled, armed and equipped, a regiment of enfranchised
bondsmen, known as the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.
"For this action, as I have ascertained, the pretended
government of which you are the chief officer, has issued
against me and all of my officers who were engaged in
organizing the regiment in question, a General Order of
Outlawry, which announces that, if captured, we shall not
even be allowed the usual miserable treatment extended to
such captives as fall into your hands; but that we are to be
regarded as felons, and to receive the death by hanging due
to such, irrespective of the laws of war.
"Mr. Davis, we have been acquainted intimately in the past.
We have campaigned together, and our social relations have
been such as to make each understand the other thoroughly.
That you mean, if it be ever in your power, to execute the
full rigor of your threats, I am well assured; and you will
believe my assertion, that I thank you for having raised in
connection with me and my acts, this sharp and decisive
issue. I shall proudly accept, if such be the chance of war,
the martyrdom you menace; and hereby give you notice that
unless your General Order against me and my officers be
formally revoked, within thirty days from the date of the
transmission of this letter, sent under a flag of truce, I
shall take your action in the matter as finale; and will
reciprocate it by hanging every rebel officer who now is, or
may hereafter be taken, prisoner by the troops of the
command to which I am about returning.
"Believe me that I rejoice at the aspect now being given to
the war by the course you have adopted. In my judgment, if
the undoubted felony of treason had been treated from the
outset as it deserves to be--as the sum of all felonies and
crimes--this rebellion would never have attained its present
menacing proportions. The war you and your fellow
conspirators have been waging against the United States must
be regarded either as a war of justifiable defence, carried
on for the integrity of the boundaries of a sovereign
Confederation of States against foreign aggression, or as
the most wicked, enormous, and deliberately planned
conspiracy against human liberty and for the triumph of
treason and slavery, of which the records of the world's
history contain any note.
"If our Government should adopt the first view of the case,
you and your fellow rebels may justly claim to be
considered a most unjustly treated body of disinterested
patriots,--although, perhaps, a little mistaken in your
connivance with the thefts by which your agent, John B.
Floyd, succeeded in arming the South and partially disarming
the North as a preparative to the commencement of the
struggle.
"But if on the other hand--as is the theory of our
Government--the war you have levied against the U. S. be a
rebellion the most causeless, crafty and bloody ever
known,--a conspiracy having the rule-or-ruin policy for its
basis; the plunder of the black race and the reopening of
the African slave trade for its object, the continued and
further degradation of ninety per cent. of the white
population of the South in favor of a slave driving ten per
cent. aristocracy, and the exclusion of all foreign-born
immigrants from participation in the generous and equal
hospitality foreshadowed to them in the Declaration of
Independence,--if this, as I believe, be a fair statement of
the origin and motives of the rebellion of which you are the
titular head, then it would have been better had our
Government adhered to the constitutional view of treason
from the start, and hung every man taken in arms against the
U. S. from the first butchery in the streets of Baltimore,
down to the last resultless battle fought in the vicinity of
Sharpsburg. If treason, in other words, be any crime, it is
the essence of all crimes; a vast machinery of guilt,
multiplying assassinations into wholesale slaughter, and
organizing plunder as the basis for supporting a system of
National Brigandage. Your action, and that of those with
whom you are in league, has its best comment in the sympathy
extended to your cause by the despots and aristocracies of
Europe. You have succeeded in throwing back civilization for
many years; and have made of the country that was the
freest, happiest, proudest, richest, and most progressive
but two short years ago, a vast temple of mourning, doubt,
anxiety and privation; our manufactories of all but war
material nearly paralyzed; the inventive spirit which was
forever developing new resources destroyed, and our flag,
that carried respect everywhere, now mocked by enemies who
think its glory tarnished, and that its power is soon to
become a mere tradition of the past.
"For all these results, Mr. Davis, and for the three hundred
thousand lives already sacrificed on both sides in the
war--some pouring out their blood on the battle-field, and
others fever stricken and wasting away to death in
overcrowded hospitals--you and the fellow miscreants who
have been your associates in this conspiracy are
responsible. Of you and them it may, with truth be said,
that if all the innocent blood which you have spilled could
be collected in one pool, the whole government of your
Confederacy might swim in it.
"I am aware that this is not the language in which the
prevailing etiquette of our army is in the habit of
considering your conspiracy. It has come to pass--through
what instrumentalities you are best able to decide--that the
greatest and worst crime ever attempted against the human
family, has been treated in certain quarters as though it
were a mere error of judgment on the part of some gifted
friend; a thing to be regretted, of course, as causing more
or less disturbance to the relation of amity and esteem
heretofore existing between those charged with the
repression of such eccentricities and the eccentric actors;
in fact, as a slight political miscalculation or peccadillo,
rather than as an outrage involving the desolation of a
continent, and demanding the promptest and severest
retribution within power of human law.
"For myself, I have never been able to take this view of the
matter. During a lifetime of active service, I have seen the
seeds of this conspiracy planted in the rank soil of
slavery, and the upas-growth watered by just such tricklings
of a courtesy alike false to justice, expediency, and our
eternal future. Had we at an earlier day commenced to call
things by their right names, and to look at the hideous
features of slavery with our ordinary eyesight and common
sense, instead of through the rose-colored glasses of
supposed political expediency, there would be three hundred
thousand more men alive to-day on American soil; and our
country would never for a moment have forfeited her proud
position as the highest exampler of the blessings--morals,
intellectual and material--to be derived from a free form of
government.
"Whether your intention of hanging me and those of my staff
and other officers who were engaged in organizing the 1st S.
C. Volunteers, in case we are taken prisoners in battle,
will be likely to benefit your cause or not, is a matter
mainly for your own consideration. For us, our profession
makes the sacrifice of life a contingency ever present and
always to be accepted; and although such a form of death as
your order proposes, is not that to the contemplating of
which soldiers have trained themselves, I feel well assured,
both for myself and those included in my sentence, that we
could die in no manner more damaging to your abominable
rebellion and the abominable institution which is its
origin.
"The South has already tried one hanging experiment, but not
with a success--one would think--to encourage its
repetition. John Brown, who was well known to me in Kansas,
and who will be known in appreciative history through
centuries which will only recall your name to load it with
curses, once entered Virginia with seventeen men and an
idea. The terror caused by the presence of his idea, and the
dauntless courage which prompted the assertion of his faith,
against all odds, I need not now recall. The history is too
familiar and too painful. 'Old Ossawatomie' was caught and
hung; his seventeen men were killed, captured or dispersed,
and several of them shared his fate. Portions of his skin
were tanned, I am told, and circulated as relics dear to the
barbarity of the slave-holding heart. But more than a
million of armed white men, Mr. Davis, are to-day marching
South, in practical acknowledgement that they regard the
hanging of three years ago as the murder of a martyr; and as
they march to a battle which has the emancipation of all
slaves as one of its most glorious results, his name is on
their lips; to the music of his memory their marching feet
keep time; and as they sling knapsacks each one becomes
aware that he is an armed apostle of the faith preached by
him,
"'Who has gone to be a soldier
In the army of the Lord!'
"I am content, if such be the will of Providence to ascend
the scaffold made sacred by the blood of this martyr; and I
rejoice at every prospect of making our struggle more
earnest and inexorable on both sides; for the sharper the
conflict the sooner ended; the more vigorous and remorseless
the strife, the less blood must be shed in it eventually.
"In conclusion, let me assure you, that I rejoice with my
whole heart that your order in my case, and that of my
officers, if unrevoked, will untie our hands for the future;
and that we shall be able to treat rebellion as it deserves,
and give to the felony of treason a felon's death.
"Very obediently yours,
DAVID HUNTER, _Maj.-Gen._"
"Not long after General Hunter's return to the Department of
the South, the first step towards organizing and recognizing
negro troops was taken by our Government, in a letter of
instructions directing Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton--then
Military Governor of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida,
within the limits of Gen. Hunter's command--to forthwith
raise and organize fifty thousand able-bodied blacks, for
service as laborers in the quartermaster's department; of
whom five thousand--only five thousand, mark you--might be
armed and drilled as soldiers for the purpose of 'protecting
the women and children of their fellow-laborers who might be
absent from home in the public service.'
"Here was authority given to Gen. Saxton, over Hunter's
head, to pursue some steps farther the experiment which
Hunter--soon followed by General Phelps, also included in
the rebel order of 'outlawry'--had been the first to
initiate. The rebel order still remained in full force, and
with no protest against it on the part of our Government;
nor to our knowledge, was any demand from Washington ever
made for its revocation during the existence of the
Confederacy. If Hunter, therefore, or any of his officers,
had been captured in any of the campaigns of the past two
and a half years, they had the pleasant knowledge for their
comfort that any rebel officers into whose hands they might
fall, was strictly enjoined to--not 'shoot them on the
spot,' as was the order of General Dix, but to hang them on
the first tree; and hang them quickly.
[Illustration: OFF FOR THE WAR.
Negro men marching aboard a steamer to join their regiments at Hilton
Head, S. C.]
"With the subsequent history of our black troops the public
is already familiar. General Lorenzo Thomas, titular
Adjutant-General of our army, not being regarded as a very
efficient officer for that place, was permanently detailed
on various services; now exchanging prisoners, now
discussing points of military law, now organizing black
brigades down the Mississippi and elsewhere. In fact, the
main object seemed to be to keep this Gen. Thomas--who must
not be confounded with Gen. George H. Thomas, one of the
true heroes of our army,--away from the Adjutant-General's
office at Washington, in order that Brigadier-General E. W.
Townsend--only a Colonel until quite recently--might perform
all the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant-General of
our army, while only signing himself and ranking as First
Assistant Adjutant-General. If there be an officer who has
done noble service in the late war while receiving no public
credit for the same,--no newspaper puffs nor public
ovation,--that man is Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend, who
should long since have been made a major-general, to rank
from the first day of the rebellion.
"And now let us only add, as practical proof that the
rebels, even in their most rabid state, were not insensible
to the force of proper "reasons," the following anecdote:
Some officers of one of the black regiments--Colonel
Higginson's, we believe--indiscreetly rode beyond our lines
around St. Augustine in pursuit of game, but whether
feathered or female this deponent sayeth not. Their guide
proved to be a spy, who had given notice of the intended
expedition to the enemy, and the whole party were soon
surprised and captured. The next we heard of them, they were
confined in the condemned cells of one of the Florida State
prisons, and were to be "tried"--i. e., sentenced and
executed--as 'having been engaged in inciting negro
insurrection.'
"We had some wealthy young slave-holders belonging to the
first families of South Carolina in the custody of
Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Hall--now Brigadier-General of this
city, who was our Provost Marshal; and it was on this basis
Gen. Hunter resolved to operate. 'Release my officers of
black troops from your condemned cells at once, and notify
me of the fact. Until so notified, your first family
prisoners in my hands'--the names then given--'will receive
precisely similar treatment. For each of my officers hung, I
will hang three of my prisoners who are slave-holders.' This
dose operated with instantaneous effect, and the next letter
received from our captured officers set forth that they were
at large on parole, and treated as well as they could wish
to be in that miserable country.
"We cannot better conclude this sketch, perhaps, than by
giving the brief but pregnant verses in which our
ex-orderly, Private Miles O'Reilly, late of the Old Tenth
Army Corps, gave his opinion on this subject. They were
first published in connection with the banquet given in New
York by Gen. T. F. Meagher and the officers of the Irish
Brigade, to the returned veterans of that organization on
the 13th of Jan. 1864, at Irving Hall. Of this song it may,
perhaps, be said, in verity and without vanity, that, as
Gen. Hunter's letter to Mr. Wickliffe had settled the negro
soldiers' controversy in its official and Congressional
form, so did the publication and immediate popular adoption
of these verses conclude all argument upon this matter in
the mind of the general public. Its common sense, with a
dash of drollery, at once won over the Irish, who had been
the bitterest opponents of the measure, to become its
friends; and from that hour to this, the attacks upon the
experiment of our negro soldiery have been so few and far
between that, indeed, they may be said to have ceased
altogether. It ran as follows, and appeared in the _Herald_
the morning after the banquet as a portion of the report of
the speeches and festivities:
"SAMBO'S RIGHT TO BE KIL'T.
(_Air--The Low-Backed Chair._)
Some say it is a burnin' shame
To make the naygurs fight,
An' that the thrade o' being kilt
Belongs but to the white;
But as for me, upon me sowl,
So liberal are we here,
I'll let Sambo be murthered in place o' meself
On every day in the year.
On every day in the year, boys,
An' every hour in the day,
The right to be kil't I'll divide wid him,
An' divil a word I'll say.
In battle's wild commotion
I shouldn't at all object,
If Sambo's body should stop a ball
That was comin' for me direct;
An' the prod of a Southern bagnet,
So liberal are we here,
I'll resign and let Sambo take it,
On every day in the year.
On every day in the year boys,
An' wid none o' your nasty pride,
All right in a Southern bagnet prod
Wid Sambo I'll divide.
The men who object to Sambo
Should take his place and fight;
An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue
Than a liver that's wake an' white;
Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades
His finger a thrigger can pull,
An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight
From under its thatch o' wool.
So hear me all, boys, darlins!
Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff,
The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him,
An' give him the largest half!
"In regard to Hunter's reply to Mr. Wickliffe, we shall only
add this anecdote, told us one day by that brilliant
gentleman and scholar, the Hon "Sunset" Cox, of Ohio (now of
New York): 'I tell you, that letter from Hunter spoiled the
prettiest speech I had ever thought of making. I had been
delighted with Wickliffe's motion, and thought the reply to
it would furnish us first-rate Democrat's thunder for the
next election. I made up my mind to sail in against Hunter's
answer--no matter what it was--the moment it came; and to be
even more humorously successful in its delivery and
reception than I was in my speech against War Horse Gurley,
of Ohio, which you have just been complimenting. Well, you
see, man proposes, but providence orders otherwise. When the
Clerk announced the receipt of the answer, and that he was
about to read it, I caught the Speaker's eye and was booked
for the first speech against your negro experiment. The
first sentence, being formal and official, was very well;
but at the second the House began to grin, and at the third,
not a man on the floor--except Father Wickliffe, of
Kentucky, perhaps--who was not convulsed with laughter. Even
my own risibles I found to be affected; and before the
document was concluded, I motioned the Speaker that he might
give the floor to whom he pleased, as my desire to
distinguish myself in that particular tilt was over.'"