"I been a-tinking, Mas'r, _dat's jess what I went for_."
I thought this did well enough for my very first interchange of dialogue
with my recruits.
_November 27, 1862._
Thanksgiving-Day; it is the first moment I have had for writing during
these three days, which have installed me into a new mode of life so
thoroughly that they seem three years. Scarcely pausing in New York or
in Beaufort, there seems to have been for me but one step from the camp
of a Massachusetts regiment to this one, and that step over leagues of
waves.
It is a holiday wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The
chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seem like New England, but those
alone. The air is full of noisy drumming and of gunshots; for the
prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is
chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken
windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great
live-oaks, with their hard, shining leaves, and their branches hung with
a universal drapery of soft, long moss, like fringe-trees struck with
grayness. Below, the sandy soil, scantly covered with coarse grass,
bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff,
shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture.
Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and
unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck
and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All
this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' walk beyond
the hovels and the live-oaks bring one to something so un-Southern that
the whole Southern coast at this moment trembles at the suggestion of
such a thing,--the camp of a regiment of freed slaves.
One adapts one's self so readily to new surroundings that already the
full zest of the novelty seems passing away from my perceptions, and I
write these lines in an eager effort to retain all I can. Already I am
growing used to the experience, at first so novel, of living among five
hundred men, and scarce a white face to be seen,--of seeing them go
through all their daily processes, eating, frolicking, talking, just as
if they were white. Each day at dress-parade I stand with the customary
folding of the arms before a regimental line of countenances so black
that I can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not; black is
every hand which moves in ready cadence as I vociferate, "Battalion!
Shoulder arms!" nor is it till the line of white officers moves forward,
as parade is dismissed, that I am reminded that my own face is not the
color of coal.
The first few days on duty with a new regiment must be devoted almost
wholly to tightening reins; in this process one deals chiefly with the
officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the
men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations,
wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into
shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of
course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and
they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites.
Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been
for months in camp in the abortive "Hunter Regiment," yet in that loose
kind of way which, like average militia-training, is a doubtful
advantage. I notice that some companies, too, look darker than others,
though all are purer African than I expected. This is said to be partly
a geographical difference between the South-Carolina and Florida men.
When the Rebels evacuated this region, they probably took with them the
house-servants, including most of the mixed blood, so that the residuum
seems very black. But the men brought from Fernandina the other day
average lighter in complexion, and look more intelligent, and they
certainly take wonderfully to the drill.
It needs but a few days to show up the absurdity of distrusting the
military availability of these people. They have quite as much average
comprehension as whites of the need of the thing, as much courage, (I
doubt not,) as much previous knowledge of the gun, and, above all, a
readiness of ear and of imitation, which, for purposes of drill,
counterbalances any defect of mental training. To learn the drill, one
does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager,
active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are, the
better. There is no trouble about the drill; they will surpass whites
in that. As to camp-life, they have little to sacrifice, they are better
fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before, and they
appear to have fewer inconvenient vices. They are simple, docile, and
affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same men who stood
fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late expedition, have
come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly ludicrous manner on being
transferred from one company in the regiment to another.
In noticing the squad-drills, I perceive that the men learn less
laboriously than whites that "double, double, toil and trouble," which
is the elementary vexation of the drill-master,--that they more rarely
mistake their left for their right,--and are more grave and sedate while
under instruction. The extremes of jollity and sobriety, being greater
with them, are less liable to be intermingled; these companies can be
driven with a looser rein than my former one, for they restrain
themselves; but the moment they are dismissed from drill, every tongue
is relaxed and every ivory tooth visible. This morning I wandered about
where the different companies were target-shooting, and their glee was
contagious. Such exulting shouts of, "Ki! ole man," when some steady old
turkey-shooter brought his gun down for an instant's aim, and then
unerringly hit the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his
piece into the ground at half-cock, such infinite guffawing and delight,
such rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made
the "Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear a feeble imitation.
_Evening._--Better still was a scene on which I stumbled to-night.
Strolling in the cool moonlight, I was attracted by a brilliant light
beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or
forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by
name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of
his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a
few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the last
degree, of his adventures in escaping from his master to the Union
vessels; and even I, who have heard the stories of Harriet Tubman, and
such wonderful slave-comedians, never witnessed such a piece of acting.
When I came upon the scene, he had just come unexpectedly upon a
plantation-house, and, putting a bold face upon it, had walked up to the
door.
"Den I go up to de white man, very humble, and say, would he please gib
ole man a mouthful for eat?
"He say, he must hab de valeration of half a dollar.
"Den I look berry sorry, and turn for go away.
"Den he say, I might gib him dat hatchet I had.
"Den I say," (this in a tragic vein,) "dat I must hab dat hatchet for
defend myself _from de dogs_!"
[Immense applause, and one appreciating auditor says, chuckling, "Dat
was your _arms_, ole man," which brings down the house again.]
"Den he say, de Yankee pickets was near by, and I must be very keerful.
"Den I say, 'Good Lord, Mas'r, am dey?'"
Words cannot express the complete dissimulation with which these accents
of terror were uttered,--this being precisely the piece of information
he wished to obtain.
Then he narrated his devices to get into the house at night and obtain
some food,--how a dog flew at him,--how the whole household, black and
white, rose in pursuit,--how he scrambled under a hedge and over a high
fence, etc.,--all in a style of which Gough alone among orators can give
the faintest impression, so thoroughly dramatized was every syllable.
Then he described his reaching the river-side at last, and trying to
decide whether certain vessels held friends or foes.
"Den I see guns on board, and sure sartin he Union boat, and I pop my
head up. Den I been-a-tink [think] Seceshkey hab guns too, and my head
go down again. Den I bide in de bush till morning. Den I open my bundle,
and take ole white shirt and tie him on ole pole and wave him, and ebry
time de wind blow, I been-a-tremble, and drap down in de
bushes,"--because, being between two fires, he doubted whether friend or
foe would see his signal first. And so on, with a succession of tricks
beyond Moliere, of acts of caution, foresight, patient cunning, which
were listened to with infinite gusto and perfect comprehension by every
listener.
And all this to a bivouac of negro soldiers, with the brilliant fire
lighting up their red trousers and gleaming from their shining black
faces,--eyes and teeth all white with tumultuous glee. Overhead, the
mighty limbs of a great live-oak, with the weird moss swaying in the
smoke, and the high moon gleaming faintly through.
Yet to-morrow strangers will remark on the hopeless, impenetrable
stupidity in the daylight faces of many of these very men, the solid
mask under which Nature has concealed all this wealth of mother-wit.
This very comedian is one to whom one might point, as he hoed lazily in
a cotton-field, as a being the light of whose brain had utterly gone
out; and this scene seems like coming by night upon some conclave of
black beetles, and finding them engaged, with green-room and
foot-lights, in enacting "Poor Pillicoddy." This is their university;
every young Sambo before me, as he turned over the sweet-potatoes and
pea-nuts which were roasting in the ashes, listened with reverence to
the wiles of the ancient Ulysses, and meditated the same. It is Nature's
compensation; oppression simply crushes the upper faculties of the head,
and crowds everything into the perceptive organs. Cato, thou reasonest
well! When I get into any serious scrape, in an enemy's country, may I
be lucky enough to have you at my elbow, to pull me out of it!
The men seem to have enjoyed the novel event of Thanksgiving-Day; they
have had company and regimental prize-shootings, a minimum of speeches
and a maximum of dinner. Bill of fare: two beef-cattle and a thousand
oranges. The oranges cost a cent apiece, and the cattle were Secesh,
bestowed by General Saxby, as they all call him.
_December 1, 1862._
How absurd is the impression bequeathed by Slavery in regard to these
Southern blacks, that they are sluggish and inefficient in labor! Last
night, after a hard day's work, (our guns and the remainder of our tents
being just issued,) an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready
in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of
those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their
use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the
steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went
at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these
wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then across the
slimy beach at low tide, then up a steep bank, and all in one great
uproar of merriment for two hours. Running most of the time, chattering
all the time, snatching the boards from each other's backs as if they
were some coveted treasure, getting up eager rivalries between different
companies, pouring great choruses of ridicule on the heads of all
shirkers, they made the whole scene so enlivening that I gladly stayed
out in the moonlight for the whole time to watch it. And all this
without any urging or any promised reward, but simply as the most
natural way of doing the thing. The steamboat-captain declared that they
unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang
could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the
night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a camp-fire, cooking a
surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such
a job of work, he answered, with the broadest grin,--
"Oh, no, Cunnel, da's no work at all, Cunnel; dat only jess enough _for
stretch we_."
_December 2, 1862._
I believe I have not yet enumerated the probable drawbacks to the
success of this regiment, if any. We are exposed to no direct annoyance
from the white regiments, being out of their way; and we have as yet no
discomforts or privations which we do not share with them. I do not as
yet see the slightest obstacle, in the nature of the blacks, to making
them good soldiers,--but rather the contrary. They take readily to
drill, and do not object to discipline; they are not especially dull or
inattentive; they seem fully to understand the importance of the
contest, and of their share in it. They show no jealousy or suspicion
towards their officers.
They do show these feelings, however, towards the Government itself; and
no one can wonder. Here lies the drawback to rapid recruiting. Were this
a wholly new regiment, it would have been full to overflowing, I am
satisfied, ere now. The trouble is in the legacy of bitter distrust
bequeathed by the abortive regiment of General Hunter,--into which they
were driven like cattle, kept for several months in camp, and then
turned off without a shilling, by order of the War Department. The
formation of that regiment was on the whole a great injury to this one;
and the men who came from it, though the best soldiers we have in other
respects, are the least sanguine and cheerful; while those who now
refuse to enlist have a great influence in deterring others. Our
soldiers are constantly twitted by their families and friends with their
prospect of risking their lives in the service, and being paid nothing;
and it is in vain that we read them the instructions of the Secretary of
War to General Saxton, promising them the full pay of soldiers. They
only half believe it.[A]
Another drawback is that some of the white soldiers delight in
frightening the women on the plantations with doleful tales of plans for
putting us in the front rank in all battles, and such silly talk,--the
object being, perhaps, to prevent our being employed on active service
at all. All these considerations they feel precisely as white men
would,--no less, no more; and it is the comparative freedom from such
unfavorable influences which makes the Florida men seem more bold and
manly, as they undoubtedly do. To-day General Saxton has returned from
Fernandina with seventy-six recruits, and the eagerness of the captains
to secure them was a sight to see. Yet they cannot deny that some of the
very best men in the regiment are South Carolinians.
_December 3, 1862._--7 P. M.
What a life is this I lead! It is a dark, mild, drizzling evening, and
as the foggy air breeds sand-flies, so it calls out melodies and strange
antics from this mysterious race of grown-up children with whom my lot
is cast. All over the camp the lights glimmer in the tents, and as I sit
at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and
glee. Boys laugh and shout,--a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some
tent, not an officer's,--a drum throbs far away in another,--wild
kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead
slavemasters,--and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous
sound of that strange festival, half powwow, half prayer-meeting, which
they know only as a "shout." These fires are usually inclosed in a
little booth, made neatly of palm-leaves and covered in at top, a
regular native African hut, in short, such as is pictured in books, and
such as I once got up from dried palm-leaves, for a fair, at home. This
hut is now crammed with men, singing at the top of their voices, in one
of their quaint, monotonous, endless, negro-Methodist chants, with
obscure syllables recurring constantly, and slight variations
interwoven, all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and
clapping of the hands, like castanets. Then the excitement spreads:
inside and outside the inclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others
join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre;
some "heel and toe" tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on,
others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep
steadily circling like dervishes; spectators applaud special strokes of
skill; my approach only enlivens the scene; the circle enlarges, louder
grows the singing, rousing shouts of encouragement come in, half
bacchanalian, half devout, "Wake 'em, brudder!" "Stan' up to 'em,
brudder!"--and still the ceaseless drumming and clapping, in perfect
cadence, goes steadily on. Suddenly there comes a sort of _snap_, and
the spell breaks, amid general sighing and laughter. And this not rarely
and occasionally, but night after night,--while in other parts of the
camp the soberest prayers and exhortations are proceeding sedately.
A simple and lovable people, whose graces seem to come by nature, and
whose vices by training. Some of the best superintendents confirm the
early tales of innocence, and Dr. Zachos told me last night that on his
plantation, a sequestered one, "they had absolutely no vices." Nor have
these men of mine yet shown any worth mentioning; since I took command I
have heard of no man intoxicated, and there has been but one small
quarrel. I suppose that scarcely a white regiment in the army shows so
little swearing. Take the "Progressive Friends" and put them in red
trousers, and I verily believe they would fill a guard-house sooner than
these men. If camp-regulations are violated, it seems to be usually
through heedlessness. They love passionately three things, besides their
spiritual incantations,--namely, sugar, home, and tobacco. This last
affection brings tears to their eyes, almost, when they speak of their
urgent need of pay: they speak of their last-remembered quid as if it
were some deceased relative, too early lost, and to be mourned forever.
As for sugar, no white man can drink coffee after they have sweetened it
to their liking.
I see that the pride which military life creates may cause the
plantation-trickeries to diminish. For instance, these men make the most
admirable sentinels. It is far harder to pass the camp-lines at night
than in the camp from which I came; and I have seen none of that
disposition to connive at the offences of members of one's own company
which is so troublesome among white soldiers. Nor are they lazy, either
about work or drill; in all respects they seem better material for
soldiers than I had dared to hope.
There is one company in particular, all Florida men, which I certainly
think the finest-looking company I ever saw, white or black; they range
admirably in size, have remarkable erectness and ease of carriage, and
really march splendidly. Not a visitor but notices them; yet they have
been under drill only a fortnight, and a part only two days. They have
all been slaves, and very few are even mulattoes.
_December 4, 1862._
"Dwelling in tents, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." This condition is
certainly mine,--and with a multitude of patriarchs beside, not to
mention Caesar and Pompey, Hercules and Bacchus.
A moving life, tented at night, this experience has been mine in civil
society, if society be civil before the luxurious forest-fires of Maine
and the Adirondack, or upon the lonely prairies of Kansas. But a
stationary tent-life, deliberately going to housekeeping under canvas,
I have never had before, though in our barrack-life at "Camp Wool" I
often wished for it.
The accommodations here are about as liberal as my quarters there, two
wall-tents being placed end to end, for office and bed-room, and
separated at will by a "fly" of canvas. There is a good board floor and
mop-board, effectually excluding dampness and draughts, and everything
but sand, which on windy days penetrates everywhere. The
office-furniture consists of a good desk or secretary, a very clumsy and
disastrous settee, and a remarkable chair. The desk is a bequest of the
slaveholders, and the settee of the slaves, being ecclesiastical in its
origin, and appertaining to the little old church or "praise-house," now
used for commissary purposes. The chair is a composite structure: I
found a cane seat on a dust-heap, which a black sergeant combined with
two legs from a broken bedstead and two more from an oak-bough. I sit on
it with a pride of conscious invention, mitigated by profound
insecurity. Bedroom-furniture, a couch made of gun-boxes covered with
condemned blankets, another settee, two pails, a tin cup, tin basin, (we
prize any tin or wooden ware as savages prize iron,) and a valise,
regulation-size. Seriously considered, nothing more appears needful,
unless ambition might crave another chair for company, and, perhaps,
something for a wash-stand higher than a settee.
To-day it rains hard, and the wind quivers through the closed canvas,
and makes one feel at sea. All the talk of the camp outside is fused
into a cheerful and indistinguishable murmur, pierced through at every
moment by the wail of the hovering plover. Sometimes a face, black or
white, peers through the entrance with some message. Since the light
readily penetrates, though the rain cannot, the tent conveys a feeling
of charmed security, as if an invisible boundary checked the pattering
drops and held the moaning wind. The front tent I share, as yet, with my
adjutant; in the inner apartment I reign supreme, bounded in a nutshell,
with no bad dreams.
In all pleasant weather the outer "fly" is open, and men pass and
repass, a chattering throng. I think of Emerson's Saadi, "As thou
sittest at thy door, on the desert's yellow floor,"--for these bare
sand-plains, gray above, are always yellow when upturned, and there
seems a tinge of Orientalism in all our life.
Thrice a day we go to the plantation-houses for our meals,
camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in
different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of
William Washington,--William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern of
house-servants, William the noiseless, the observing, the
discriminating, who knows everything that can be got and how to cook it.
William and his tidy, lady-like little spouse Hetty--a pair of wedded
lovers, if ever I saw one--set our table in their one room, half-way
between an unglazed window and a large wood-fire, such as is often
welcome. Thanks to the adjutant, we are provided with the social
magnificence of napkins; while (lest pride take too high a flight) our
table-cloth consists of two "New York Tribunes" and a "Leslie's
Pictorial." Every steamer brings us a clean table-cloth. Here are we
forever supplied with pork and oysters and sweet-potatoes and rice and
hominy and corn-bread and milk; also mysterious griddle-cakes of
corn and pumpkin; also preserves made of pumpkin-chips, and other
fanciful productions of Ethiop art. Mr. E. promised the
plantation-superintendents who should come down here "all the luxuries
of home," and we certainly have much apparent, if little real variety.
Once William produced with some palpitation something fricasseed, which
he boldly termed chicken; it was very small, and seemed in some
undeveloped condition of ante-natal toughness. After the meal, he
frankly avowed it for squirrel.
_December 5, 1862._
Give these people their tongues, their feet, and their leisure, and they
are happy. At every twilight the air is full of singing, talking, and
clapping of hands in unison. One of their favorite songs is full of
plaintive cadences; it is not, I think, a Methodist tune, and I wonder
where they obtained a chant of such beauty.
"I can't stay behind, my Lord, I can't stay behind!
Oh, my father is gone, my father is gone,
My father is gone into heaven, my Lord!
I can't stay behind!
Dere's room enough, room enough,
Room enough in de heaven for de sojer:
Can't stay behind!"
It always excites them to have us looking on, yet they sing these songs
at all times and seasons. I have heard this very song dimly droning on
near midnight, and, tracing it into the recesses of a cook-house, have
found an old fellow coiled away among the pots and provisions, chanting
away with his "Can't stay behind, sinner," till I made him leave his
song behind.
This evening, after working themselves up to the highest pitch, a party
suddenly rushed off, got a barrel, and mounted some man upon it, who
said, "Gib anoder song, boys, and I'se gib you a speech." After some
hesitation and sundry shouts of "Rise de sing, somebody," and "Stan' up
for Jesus, brudder," irreverently put in by the juveniles, they got upon
the John Brown song, always a favorite, adding a jubilant verse which I
had never before heard,--"We'll beat Beauregard on de clare
battle-field." Then came the promised speech, and then no less than
seven other speeches by as many men, on a variety of barrels, each
orator being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his
special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the
queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable
enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points
at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded slaves
in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in
comparison. The most eloquent, perhaps, was Corporal Prince Lambkin,
just arrived from Fernandina, who evidently had a previous reputation
among them. His historical references were very interesting: he reminded
them that he had predicted this war ever since Fremont's time, to which
some of the crowd assented; he gave a very intelligent account of that
Presidential campaign, and then described most impressively the secret
anxiety of the slaves in Florida to know all about President Lincoln's
election, and told how they all refused to work on the fourth of March,
expecting their freedom to date from that day. He finally brought out
one of the few really impressive appeals for the American flag that I
have ever heard. "Our mas'rs dey hab lib under de flag, dey got dere
wealth under it, and ebryting beautiful for dere chilen. Under it dey
hab grind us up, and put us in dere pocket for money. But de fus' minute
dey tink dat ole nag mean freedom for we colored people, dey pull it
right down, and run up de rag ob dere own." (Immense applause.) "But
we'll neber desert de ole flag, boys, neber; we hab lib under it for
_eighteen hundred sixty-two years_, and we'll die for it now." With
which overpowering discharge of chronology-at-long-range, this most
effective of stump-speeches closed. I see already with relief that there
will be small demand in this regiment for harangues from the officers;
give the men an empty barrel for a stump, and they will do their own
exhortation.