A writer, minister, social reformer, and radical abolitionist who had helped finance John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Thomas Wentworth Higginson joined the newly organized 51st Massachusetts Infantry as a captain in September 1862. He was preparing to leave for New Bern, North Carolina, in November when Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, the Union military governor of South Carolina, offered him the command of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a recently formed regiment recruited from freed slaves. Higginson accepted, and in January 1863 led the regiment on a successful expedition into southern Georgia and northern Florida during which his troops gathered supplies, liberated slaves, and skirmished with Confederate forces. During a second expedition in March the 1st South Carolina briefly occupied Jacksonville, Florida, before returning to its base at Port Royal.
MAY 10
Such fun as we have had over the newspaper accounts of us. I just told Dr Rogers it was fortunate that novels were still published, that there might be truth found somewhere, since history certainly affords none; but he says if things go on so much longer we c’ant even put faith in novels. We have just seen the scrap about our picket firing—two negroes wounded—two butternuts biting the dust—all sheer fabrication. Occasionally they fire a little, at very long range & my men fire back, & that’s all about it—except Gen. Hunter’s pithy endorsement on the back of Gen. Saxton’s letter—“Give them as good as they send—D. Hunter, Maj. Genl. Commanding”—that was to the point.
The great drawback of these Southern col’d regt’s will always be the severe burden of writing they throw on officers, both field & line. I spend hours daily, & much vitality needed for other things, in doing writing which every Col. of a white reg’t has one or more clerks detailed to do; the same with my Quartermaster, the same with my adjutant. This is inevitable; in addition in this particular case, the Lt. col. & the Major are not naturally bookkeepers, any more than drillmasters (neither of them could drill either the reg’t or a company ten minutes without some serious mistake—& if we were in battle & I were injured, a Captain would have to take command); The Sergeant Major, the only other person I can ever call on for aid in writing, is sick, & not efficient when well, & has his own work beside. If col’d regt’s were not easier to drill & discipline than white ones, all their officers would die, except those who had happily never learned to write.
I d’ont wish to be severe on my field officers—Maj Strong I should be very sorry to lose; he has no turn for drill & his health is delicate, but he is the soul of courage, full of enterprise & resources, always amiable always ready to work. Lt. Col. Billings is absolutely worthless.
It is Sunday noon & a wedding party is sitting under the trees, awaiting the Chaplain. One soldier a good looking youth in uniform coat & festive white pants & gloves; & two young girls, jet black, in low necked white muslin dresses, shirt sleeves, straw colored sashes, with good figures, not too stout which they are apt to be & of the handsome shade of black. Many have a grimy black, which is repulsive looking as if it would come off—but with many the color is a very deep wine colour which to my eye is very handsome in its way; the skin being smoother & finer grained than ours, (Dr Rogers observes) both in the men & the women; their arms are particularly handsome, because labor seems to develop them without making them wiry or hairy or sunburnt. We have had many recruits lately & Dr Rogers often calls me in to admire their fine physique or to see the common marks of the lash.
Last Sunday there was a funeral on this plantation & during the whole sunny day a great prayer meeting of women sat under the great live oaks before my window & sang hymn upon hymn—an old Deborah leading off, gesticulating and beating time with her whole body & calling on each woman present by name. In the afternoon old men came from the various plantations & I let the soldiers march there, instead of to our usual meeting. The women all looked neat, with handkerchiefs round their heads.
As for the wedding, this is one of the days in the quarter when they go to be married “by de book” as they call it; often letting a mere social ceremony suffice for a time.
My poor Lieuts. O’Neil & Stockdale have fared hard. After 48 days imprisonment they were tried by court martial—convicted not of desertion but of absence without leave & set at liberty as punished enough. This Gen. S. attributes to my being too mild on them in my evidence & saying too much in their favor; but he made them resign & Gen. Hunter dismisses them from service as incompetent & worthless and they forfeit all their pay, & all this because two women, who had been soldiers wives for years, couldn’t make up their minds to go to New York alone! At any rate they will not return to the reg’t of which I was at one time afraid.
The rapid multiplication of colored regiments is of more personal importance to me than to all the rest of the nation, for it is taking a load of personal responsibility off my shoulders. There is no doubt that for many months the fate of the whole movement for colored soldiers rested on the behavior of this one regiment. A mutiny, an extensive desertion, an act of severe discipline, a Bull Run panic, a simple defeat, might have blasted the whole movement for arming the blacks—& through it the prospects of the war & of a race. Now the thing is so far advanced that Africa holds many shares in the lottery of war & should the 1st S.C.V. prove a blank, others will not. The Tribune correspondent said to me the other day, “This is the only regiment with which the public has become familiar; in all other cases they have known at most the Division or the Brigade. (It is amusing to see, even now, how they all call my 850 a Brigade.) I have had enough of this notoriety & am very willing to be merged in an army of such regiments!