1: Introductory
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These pages record some of the adventures of the First South Carolina
Volunteers, the first slave regiment mustered into the service of the
United States during the late civil war. It was, indeed, the first
colored regiment of any kind so mustered, except a portion of the troops
raised by Major-General Butler at New Orleans. These scarcely belonged
to the same class, however, being recruited from the free colored
population of that city, a comparatively self-reliant and educated race.
"The darkest of them," said General Butler, "were about the complexion
of the late Mr. Webster."
The First South Carolina, on the other hand, contained scarcely a
freeman, had not one mulatto in ten, and a far smaller proportion who
could read or write when enlisted. The only contemporary regiment of a
similar character was the "First Kansas Colored," which began
recruiting a little earlier, though it was not mustered in the usual
basis of military seniority till later. [_See Appendix_] These were
the only colored regiments recruited during the year 1862. The Second
South Carolina and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts followed early in
1863.
This is the way in which I came to the command of this
regiment. One day in November, 1862, I was sitting at dinner with my
lieutenants, John Goodell and Luther Bigelow, in the barracks of the
Fifty-First Massachusetts, Colonel Sprague, when the following letter
was put into my hands:
BEAUFORT, S. C.,
November 5, 1862.
MY DEAR SIR.
I am organizing the First Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, with
every prospect of success. Your name has been spoken of, in connection
with the command of this regiment, by some friends in whose judgment I
have confidence. I take great pleasure in offering you the position of
Colonel in it, and hope that you may be induced to accept. I shall not
fill the place until I hear from you, or sufficient time shall have
passed for me to receive your reply. Should you accept, I enclose a
pass for Port Royal, of which I trust you will feel disposed to avail
yourself at once. I am, with sincere regard, yours truly,
R. SAXTON, _Brig.-Genl, Mil. Gov._
Had an invitation reached me to take command of a regiment of Kalmuck
Tartars, it could hardly have been more unexpected. I had always looked
for the arming of the blacks, and had always felt a wish to be
associated with them; had read the scanty accounts of General Hunter's
abortive regiment, and had heard rumors of General Saxton's renewed
efforts. But the prevalent tone of public sentiment was still opposed to
any such attempts; the government kept very shy of the experiment, and
it did not seem possible that the time had come when it could be fairly
tried.
For myself, I was at the head of a fine company of my own raising, and
in a regiment to which I was already much attached. It did not seem
desirable to exchange a certainty for an uncertainty; for who knew but
General Saxton might yet be thwarted in his efforts by the pro-slavery
influence that had still so much weight at head-quarters? It would be
intolerable to go out to South Carolina, and find myself, after all, at
the head of a mere plantation-guard or a day-school in uniform.
I therefore obtained from the War Department, through Governor Andrew,
permission to go and report to General Saxton, without at once resigning
my captaincy. Fortunately it took but a few days in South Carolina to
make it clear that all was right, and the return steamer took back a
resignation of a Massachusetts commission. Thenceforth my lot was cast
altogether with the black troops, except when regiments or detachments
of white soldiers were also under my command, during the two years
following.
These details would not be worth mentioning except as they show this
fact: that I did not seek the command of colored troops, but it sought
me. And this fact again is only important to my story for this reason,
that under these circumstances I naturally viewed the new recruits
rather as subjects for discipline than for philanthropy. I had been
expecting a war for six years, ever since the Kansas troubles, and my
mind had dwelt on military matters more or less during all that time.
The best Massachusetts regiments already exhibited a high standard of
drill and discipline, and unless these men could be brought tolerably
near that standard, the fact of their extreme blackness would afford me,
even as a philanthropist, no satisfaction. Fortunately, I felt perfect
confidence that they could be so trained, having happily known, by
experience, the qualities of their race, and knowing also that they had
home and household and freedom to fight for, besides that abstraction of
"the Union." Trouble might perhaps be expected from white officials,
though this turned out far less than might have been feared; but there
was no trouble to come from the men, I thought, and none ever came. On
the other hand, it was a vast experiment of indirect philanthropy, and
one on which the result of the war and the destiny of the negro race
might rest; and this was enough to tax all one's powers. I had been an
abolitionist too long, and had known and loved John Brown too well, not
to feel a thrill of joy at last on finding myself in the position where
he only wished to be.
In view of all this, it was clear that good discipline must come first;
after that, of course, the men must be helped and elevated in all ways
as much as possible.
Of discipline there was great need, that is, of order and regular
instruction. Some of the men had already been under fire, but they were
very ignorant of drill and camp duty. The officers, being appointed from
a dozen different States, and more than as many regiments, infantry,
cavalry, artillery, and engineers, had all that diversity of methods
which so confused our army in those early days. The first need,
therefore, was of an unbroken interval of training. During this period,
which fortunately lasted nearly two months, I rarely left the camp, and
got occasional leisure moments for a fragmentary journal, to send home,
recording the many odd or novel aspects of the new experience. Camp-life
was a wonderfully strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers,
and mine lay among eight hundred men suddenly transformed from slaves
into soldiers, and representing a race affectionate, enthusiastic,
grotesque, and dramatic beyond all others. Being such, they naturally
gave material for description. There is nothing like a diary for
freshness, at least so I think, and I shall keep to the diary through
the days of camp-life, and throw the later experience into another form.
Indeed, that matter takes care of itself; diaries and letter-writing
stop when field-service begins.
I am under pretty heavy bonds to tell the truth, and only the truth;
for those who look back to the newspaper correspondence of that period
will see that this particular regiment lived for months in a glare of
publicity, such as tests any regiment severely, and certainly prevents
all subsequent romancing in its historian. As the scene of the only
effort on the Atlantic coast to arm the negro, our camp attracted a
continuous stream of visitors, military and civil. A battalion of
black soldiers, a spectacle since so common, seemed then the most
daring of innovations, and the whole demeanor of this particular
regiment was watched with microscopic scrutiny by friends and foes. I
felt sometimes as if we were a plant trying to take root, but
constantly pulled up to see if we were growing. The slightest camp
incidents sometimes came back to us, magnified and distorted, in
letters of anxious inquiry from remote parts of the Union. It was no
pleasant thing to live under such constant surveillance; but it
guaranteed the honesty of any success, while fearfully multiplying the
penalties had there been a failure. A single mutiny, such as has
happened in the infancy of a hundred regiments, a single miniature
Bull Run, a stampede of desertions, and it would have been all over
with us; the party of distrust would have got the upper hand, and
there might not have been, during the whole contest, another effort to
arm the negro.
I may now proceed, without farther preparation to the Diary.
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