Army Life in a Black Regiment | Page 6

"Poor Pillicoddy." This is their university; every
young Sambo before me, as he turned over the sweet potatoes and
peanuts 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 itl
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 campfire, cooking a
surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such
a job of work, he answered, with the broadest grin, "O no, Gunnel, da's
no work at all, Gunnel; 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.*
*With what utter humiliation were we, their officers, obliged to confess
to them, eighteen months afterwards, that it was their distrust which
was wise, and