Army Life in a Black Regiment | Page 8

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 bedroom, 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 un glazed 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 a squirrel.
December 5, 1862.
Give these people their tongues, their feet, and their leisure, and they
are happy. At every