Chapter XV: The Serpent's Experiment (5)

Now some may suggest that we make altogether too much of what so far is but the expression of an opinion, and, at worst, of an unfavorable opinion,--an opinion, too, which may yet prove to be correct. But the giving of an opinion on some matters has all the effect of taking a side, and often helps much to decide the stake. On very many accounts, this expression of English opinion, at the time it was uttered and with such emphasis, was most unwarranted and most mischievous. It is very easy to distribute its harmful influence upon our interests and prospects into three very different methods, all of which combined to injure or obstruct the Northern cause,--the National cause. Thus, this opinion of the hopelessness of our resistance of the men of our Union was of great value to the Rebels as an encouragement under any misgivings they might have; it was calculated to prejudice our position in the eyes of the world; and it had a tendency to dispirit many among ourselves. A word upon each of these points.--How quickening must it have been to the flagging hopes or determination of the Rebels to read in the English journals that they were sure of success, that the result was already registered, that they had gained their purpose simply by proposing it! Nor was it possible to regard this opinion as not carrying with it some implication that the cause of the Rebels was a just one, and was sure of success, if for other reasons, for this, too, among them, namely, that it was just. Why else were the Rebels so sure of a triumph? Was it because of their superior strength or resources? A very little inquiry would have set aside that suggestion. Was it because of the nobleness of their cause? A very frank avowal from the Vice-President of the assumed Confederacy announced to liberty-loving Englishmen that that cause was identified with a slavocracy. Or was the Rebel cause to succeed through the dignity and purity of the means enlisted in its service? It was equally well known on both sides of the water by what means and appliances of fraud, perfidy, treachery, and other outrages, the schemes of the Rebellion were initiated and pursued. If, in spite of all these negatives, the English press prophesies success to the Rebels, was not the prophecy a great comfort and spur to them?--Again, this prophecy of our sure discomfiture prejudiced us before the world. It gave a public character and aspect of hopelessness to our cause; it invited coldness of treatment towards us; it seemed to warn off all nations from giving us aid or comfort; and it virtually affirmed that any outlay of means or life by us in a cause seen to be impracticable would be reckless, sanguinary, cruel, and inhuman.--And, once more, to those among ourselves who are influenced by evil prognostications, it was most dispiriting to be told, as if by cool, unprejudiced observers from outside, that no uprising of patriotism, no heroism of sacrifice, no combination of wisdom and power would be of any avail to resist a foreordained catastrophe.--In these three harmful ways of influence, the ill-omened opinion reiterated from abroad had a tendency to fulfil itself. The whole plea of justification offered abroad for the opinion is given in the assertion that those who have once been bitterly alienated can never be brought into true harmony again, and that it is impossible to govern the unwilling as equals. England has but to read the record of her own strifes and battles and infuriated passages with Scotland and Ireland,--between whom and herself alienations of tradition, prejudice, and religion seemed to make harmony as impossible as the promise of it is to these warring States,--England has only to refresh her memory on these points, in order to relieve us of the charge of folly in attempting an impossibility. So much for the first grievance we allege against our English brethren.

Another of our specifications of wrong is involved in that already considered. If English opinion decided that our nationality must henceforth be divided, it seemed also to imply that we ought to divide according to terms dictated by the Seceders. This was a precious judgment to be pronounced against us by a sister Government which was standing in solemn treaty relations with us as a unit in our nationality! What did England suppose had become of our Northern manhood, of the spirit of which she herself once felt the force? There was something alike humiliating and exasperating in this implied advice from her, that we should tamely and unresistingly submit to a division of continent, bays, and rivers, according to terms defiantly and insultingly proposed by those who had a joint ownership with ourselves. How would England receive such advice from us under like circumstances? But we must cut short the utterance of our feelings on this point, that we may make another specification,--

Which is, that our English critics see only, or chiefly, in the fearful and momentous conflict in which we are engaged, "a bursting of the bubble of Democracy"! Shall we challenge now the intelligence or the moral principle, the lack of one or the other of which is betrayed in this sneering and malignant representation--this utter misrepresentation--of the catastrophe which has befallen our nation? Intelligent Englishmen know full well that the issue raised among us does not necessarily touch or involve at a single point the principles of Democracy, but stands wide apart and distinct from them. We might with as much propriety have said that the Irish Rebellion and the Indian Mutiny showed "the bursting of the bubble of Monarchy." The principles of Democracy stand as firm and find our people as loyal to them in every little town-meeting and in every legislature of each loyal State in the Union as they did in the days of our first enthusiastic and successful trial of them. Supposing even that the main assumption on which so many Englishmen have prematurely vented their scorn were a fact; we cannot but ask if the nation nearest akin to us, and professing to be guided in this century by feelings which forbid a rejoicing over others' great griefs, has no words of high moral sympathy, no expressions of regretful disappointment in our calamities? Is it the first or the most emphatic thing which it is most fitting for Christian Englishmen to say over the supposed wreck of a recently noble and promising country, the prospered home of thirty millions of God's children,--that "a bubble has burst"? We might interchange with our foreign "comforters" a discussion by arguments and facts as to whether a monarchy or a democracy has about it more of the qualities of a bubble, but the debate would be irrelevant to our present purpose. We believe that Democracy in its noblest and all-essential and well-proved principles will survive the shock which has struck upon our nation, whatever the result of that shock may yet prove to be. We believe, further, that the principles of Democracy will come out of the struggle which is trying, not themselves, but something quite distinct from them, with a new affirmation and vindication. But let that be as it may, we are as much ashamed for England's sake as we are aggrieved on our own account that from the vehicles of public sentiment in "the foremost realm in the world for all true culture, advanced progress, and the glorious triumphs of liberty and religion," what should be a profoundly plaintive lament over our supposed ruin is, in reality, a mocking taunt and a hateful gibe over our failure in daring to try an "un-English" experiment.[A]

[Footnote A: The following precious utterances of John Bull moralizing, which might have been spoken of the Thugs in India, or some provincial Chinese enterprise, are extracted from the cotton circular of Messrs. Neill, Brothers, addressed to their correspondents, and dated, Manchester, Aug. 21. We find the circular copied in a _religious_ newspaper published in London, without any rebuke. "The North will have to learn the limited extent of her powers as compared with the gigantic task she has undertaken. One and perhaps two defeats will be insufficient to reverse the false education of a lifetime. Many lessons will probably be necessary, and, meantime, any success the Northern troops may obtain will again inflame the national vanity, and the lessons of adversity will need to be learned over again. More effect will probably be produced by sufferings at home, by the ruin of the higher classes and pauperization of the lower, and by the general absorption of the floating capital of the country"! There, good reader, what think you of the cotton moralizing of a comfortable factor, dwelling in immaculate England, dealing with us in cotton, and with the Chinese in opium?]

The stately "Quarterly Review," in its number for July, uses a little more of dignity in wording the title of an article upon our affairs thus,--"Democracy on its Trial"; but it makes up for the waste of refinement upon its text by a lavish indulgence in scurrility and falsehood in its comments. As a specimen, take the following. Living here in this goodly city of Boston, and knowing and loving well its ways and people, we are asked to credit the following story, which the Reviewer says he heard from "a well-known traveller." The substance of the story is, that a Boston merchant proposed to gild the lamp over his street-door, but was dissuaded from so doing by the suggestion of a friend, that by savoring of aristocracy the ornamented gas-burner would offend the tyrannical people and provoke violence against it! This, the latest joke in the solemn Quarterly, has led many of its readers here to recall the days of Madame Trollope and the Reverend Mr. Fiddler, those veracious and "well-known travellers." There are, we are sorry to say, many gilded street-lamps, burnished and blazing every night, in Boston. But instead of standing before the houses of our merchants, they designate quite a different class of edifices. Our merchants, as a general thing, would object, both on the score of good taste and on grounds of disagreeable association with the signal, to raise such an ornament before the doors of their comfortable homes. The common people, however, so far from taking umbrage at the spectacle, would be rather gratified by the generosity of our grandees in being willing to show some of their finery out of doors. This would be the feeling especially of that part of our population which is composed of foreigners, who have been used to the sight of such demonstrations in their native countries, which are not democracies. In fact, we suspect that the reason why English "flunkeys" hate American "flunkeyism," with its laced coachmen, etc., is because mere money, by aping the insignia of rank, its gewgaws and trumpery, shows too plainly how much of the rank itself depends upon the fabrics and demonstrations through which it sets itself forth. We can conceive that an English nobleman travelling in this country, who might chance in one of our cities to see a turn-out with its outriders, tassels, and crests, almost or quite as fine as his own, if he were informed that it belonged to a plebeian who had grown vastly rich through some coarse traffic, might resolve to reduce all the display of his own equipage the moment he reached home. The labored and mean-spirited purpose of the writer of the aforesaid article in the Quarterly, and of other writers of like essays, is to find in our democracy the material and occasion of everything of a discreditable sort which occurs in our land. Now we apprehend, not without some means of observation and inquiry, that the state and features of society in Great Britain and in all our Northern regions are almost identically the same, or run in parallelisms, by which we might match every phenomenon, incident, prejudice, and folly, every good and every bad trait and manifestation in the one place with something exactly like it in the other. During a whole score of years, as we have read the English journals and our own, the thought has over and over again suggested itself to us that any one who had leisure and taste for the task might cut out from each series of papers respectively, for a huge commonplace book, matters of a precisely parallel nature in both countries. A simple difference in the names of men and of places would be all that would appear or exist. Every noble and every mean and every mixed exhibition of character,--every act of munificence and of baseness,--every narrative of thrilling or romantic interest,--every instance and example of popular delusion, humbug, man-worship, breach of trust, domestic infelicity, and of cunning or astounding depravity and hypocrisy,--every religious, social, and political excitement,--every panic,--and every accident even, from carelessness or want of skill,--each and all these have their exact parallels, generally within the same year of time in Great Britain and in our own country. The crimes and the catastrophes, in each locality, have seemed almost repetitions of the same things on either continent. Munificent endowments of charitable institutions, zeal in reformatory enterprises and in the correction of abuses, have shown that the people of both regions stand upon the same plane of humanity and practical Christian culture. The same great frauds have indicated in each the same amount of rottenness in men occupying places of trust. Both regions have had the same sort of unprincipled "railway kings" and bankers, similar railroad disasters, similar cases of the tumbling down of insecure walls, and of wife-poisoning. A Chartist insurrection enlists a volunteer police in London, and an apprehended riot among foreigners is met by a similar precaution in one of our cities. An intermittent controversy goes on in England about the interference of religion with common education, and Boston or New York is agitated at the same time with the question about the use of the Bible in the public schools. Boston rowdies mob an English intermeddler with the ticklish matters of our national policy, and English rowdies mob an Austrian Haynau. England goes into ecstasies over the visit of a Continental Prince, and our Northern States repeat the demonstration over the visit of a British Prince. The Duke of Wellington alarms his fellow-subjects by suggesting that their national defences would all prove insufficient against the assaults of a certain terrible Frenchman, and an American cabinet official echoes the suggestion that England may, perhaps, try her strength in turn against us. There are evidently a great many bubbles in this world, and, for all that we know to the contrary, they are all equally liable to burst. Some famous ones, bright in royal hues, have burst within the century. Some more of the same may, not impossibly, suffer a collapse before the century has closed. So that, for this matter, "the bubble of Democracy" must take its chance with the rest.

We have one more specification to make under our general statement of reasons why the North feels aggrieved with the prevailing tone of sentiment and comment in the English journals in reference to our great calamity. We protest against the verdict which finds expression in all sorts of ways and with various aggravations, that, in attempting to rupture our Union, and to withdraw from it on their own terms, at their own pleasure, the seceding States are but repeating the course of the old Thirteen Colonies in declaring themselves independent, and sundering their ties to the mother country. There is evidently the rankling of an old smart in this plea for rebels, which, while it is not intended to justify rebellion in itself, is devised as a vindication of rebels against rebels. There is manifest satisfaction and a high zest, and something of the morally awful and solemnly remonstrative, in the way in which the past is evoked to visit its ghostly retribution upon us. The old sting rankles in the English breast. She is looking on now to see us hoist by our own petard. These pamphlet pages, with their circumscribed limits and their less ambitious aims, do not invite an elaborate dealing with the facts of the case, which would expose the sophistical, if not the vengeful spirit of this English plea, as for rebels against rebels. A thorough exposition of the relations which the present Insurrection bears to the former Revolution would demand an essay. The relations between them, however, whether stated briefly or at length, would be found to be simply relations of difference, without one single point of resemblance, much less of coincidence. We can make but the briefest reference to the points of contrast and unlikeness between the two things, after asserting that they have no one common feature. It might seem evasive in us to suggest to our English critics that they should refresh their memories about the causes and the justification of our Revolution by reading the pages of their own Burke. We are content to rest our case on his argument, simply affirming that on no one point will it cover the alleged parallelism of the Southern Rebellion.

The relations of our States to each other and to the Union are quite unlike those in which the Colonies stood to England. England claimed by right of discovery and exploration the soil on which her Colonies here were planted, though she had rival claimants from the very first. A large number of the Colonists never had any original connection with England, and owed her no allegiance. Holland, Sweden, and other countries furnished much of the first stock of our settlers, who thought they were occupying a wild part of God's earth rather than a portion of the English dominions. The Colonies were not planted at public charge, by Government cost or enterprise. The English exiles, with but slender grounds of grateful remembrance of the land they had left, brought with them their own private means, subdued a wilderness, extinguished the aboriginal titles, and slowly and wearily developed the resources of the country. Often in their direst straits did they decline to ask aid from England, lest they might thereby furnish a plea for her interference with their internal affairs. Several of the Colonies from the first acted upon their presumed independence, and resolved on the frank assertion of it as soon as they might dare the venture. That time for daring happened to be contemporaneous with a tyrannical demand upon them for tribute without representation. Thus the relations of the Colonies to England were of a hap-hazard, abnormal, incidental, and always unsettled character. They might be modified or changed without any breach of contract. They might be sundered without perjury or perfidy.

How unlike in all respects are the relations of these States to each other and to the Union! Drawn together after dark days and severe trials,--solemnly pledged to each other by the people whom the Union raised to a full citizenship in the Republic,--bound by a compact designed to be without limitation of time,--lifted by their consolidation to a place and fame and prosperity which they would never else have reached,--mutually necessary to each other's thrift and protection,--making a nation adapted by its organic constitution to the region of the earth which it occupies,--and now, by previous memories and traditions, by millions of social and domestic alliances, knit by heart-strings the sundering of which will be followed by a flow of the life-blood till all is spent,--these terms are but a feeble setting forth of the relations of these States to each other and to the Union. Some of these States which have been voted out of the Union by lawless Conventions owe their creation to the Union. Their very soil has been paid for out of the public treasury. Indeed, the Union is still in debt under obligations incurred by their purchase.

How striking, too, is the contrast between the character and method of the proceedings which originated and now sustain the Rebellion, and those which initiated and carried through the Revolution! The Rebellion exhibits to us a complete inversion of the course of measures which inaugurated the Revolution. "Secession" was the invention of ambitious leaders, who overrode the forms of law, and have not dared to submit their votes and their doings to primary meetings of the people whom they have driven with a despotic tyranny. In the Revolution the people themselves were the prime movers. Each little country town and municipality of the original Colonies, that has a hundred years of history to be written, will point us boastfully to entries in its records showing how it _instructed_ its representatives first to remonstrate against tyranny, and then to resist it by successive measures, each of which, with its limitations and its increasing boldness, was dictated by the same people. The people of Virginia, remembering the ancient precedent which won them their renown, _intended_ to follow it in an early stage of our present strife. They allowed a Convention to assemble, under the express and rigid condition, that, if it should see fit to advise any measure which would affect the relations of their State to the Union, a reference should be made of it, prior to any action, to the will of the people. The Convention covertly and treacherously abused its trust. In secret session it authorized measures on the strength of which the Governor of the State proceeded to put it into hostile relations with the Union. When the foregone conclusion was at last farcically submitted to the people, a perjured Senator of the National Congress notified such of them as would not ratify the will of the Convention, that they must leave the State.

Once more, in our Revolution, holders of office and of lucrative trusts in the interest of England were to a man loyal to the Home Government, and our independence was effected without any base appliances. In the work of secession and rebellion, the very officials and sworn guardians of our Government have been the foremost plotters. They have used their opportunities and their trusts for the most perfidious purposes. Nothing but perjury in the very highest places could have initiated secession and rebellion, and to this very moment they derive all their vigor in the council-chamber and on the field from forsworn men, most of whom have been trained from their childhood, nurtured, instructed, and fed, and all of whom have been fostered in their manhood, and gifted with their whole power for harming her, by the kindly mother whose life they are assailing. If the Man with the Withered Hand had used the first thrill of life and vigor coming into it by the word of the Great Physician to aim a blow at his benefactor, his ingratitude would have needed to stand recorded only until this year of our Lord, to have been matched by deeds of men who have thrown this dear land of ours into universal mourning. Yet our English brethren would try to persuade us that these men are but repeating the course and the deeds of the American Revolution!

* * * * *

THE WILD ENDIVE.

Only the dusty common road,
The glaring weary heat;
Only a man with a soldier's load,
And the sound of tired feet.

Only the lonely creaking hum
Of the Cicada's song;
Only a fence where tall weeds come
With spikèd fingers strong.

Only a drop of the heaven's blue
Left in a way-side cup;
Only a joy for the plodding few
And eyes that look not up.

Only a weed to the passer-by,
Growing among the rest;--
Yet something clear as the light of the sky
It lodges in my breast.

THE CONTRABANDS AT FORTRESS MONROE.

In the month of August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war from Guinea entered James River and sold "twenty negars." Such is the brief record left by John Rolfe, whose name is honorably associated with that of Pocahontas. This was the first importation of the kind into the country, and the source of existing strifes. It was fitting that the system which from that slave-ship had been spreading over the continent for nearly two centuries and a half should yield for the first time to the logic of military law almost upon the spot of its origin. The coincidence may not inappropriately introduce what of experience and reflection the writer has to relate of a three-months' soldier's life in Virginia.

On the morning of the 22d of May last, Major-General Butler, welcomed with a military salute, arrived at Fortress Monroe, and assumed the command of the Department of Virginia. Hitherto we had been hemmed up in the peninsula of which the fort occupies the main part, and cut off from communication with the surrounding country. Until within a few days our forces consisted of about one thousand men belonging to the Third and Fourth Regiments of Massachusetts militia, and three hundred regulars. The only movement since our arrival on the 20th of April had been the expedition to Norfolk of the Third Regiment, in which it was my privilege to serve as a private. The fort communicates with the main-land by a dike or causeway about half a mile long, and a wooden bridge, perhaps three hundred feet long, and then there spreads out a tract of country, well wooded and dotted over with farms. Passing from this bridge for a distance of two miles northwestward, you reach a creek or arm of the bay spanned by another wooden bridge, and crossing it you are at once in the ancient village of Hampton, having a population of some fifteen hundred inhabitants. The peninsula on which the fort stands, the causeway, and the first bridge described, are the property of the United States. Nevertheless, a small picket-guard of the Secessionists had been accustomed to occupy a part of the bridge, sometimes coming even to the centre, and a Secession flag waved in sight of the fort. On the 13th of May, the Rebel picket-guard was driven from the bridge, and all the Government property was taken possession of by a detachment of two companies from the Fourth Regiment, accompanied by a dozen regulars with a field-piece, acting under the orders of Colonel Dimick, the commander of the post. They retired, denouncing vengeance on Massachusetts troops for the invasion of Virginia. Our pickets then occupied the entire bridge and a small strip of the main-land beyond, covering a valuable well; but still there was no occupation in force of any but Government property. The creation of a new military department, to the command of which a major-general was assigned, was soon to terminate this isolation. On the 13th of May the First Vermont Regiment arrived, on the 24th the Second New York, and two weeks later our forces numbered nearly ten thousand.

On the 23d of May General Butler ordered the first reconnoitring expedition, which consisted of a part of the Vermont Regiment, and proceeded under the command of Colonel Phelps over the dike and bridge towards Hampton. They were anticipated, and when in sight of the second bridge saw that it had been set on fire, and, hastening forward, extinguished the flames. The detachment then marched into the village. A parley was held with a Secession officer, who represented that the men in arms in Hampton were only a domestic police. Meanwhile the white inhabitants, particularly the women, had generally disappeared. The negroes gathered around our men, and their evident exhilaration was particularly noted, some of them saying, "Glad to see you, Massa," and betraying the fact, that, on the approach of the detachment, a field-piece stationed at the bridge had been thrown into the sea. This was the first communication between our army and the negroes in this department.

The reconnoissance of the day had more important results than were anticipated. Three negroes, owned by Colonel Mallory, a lawyer of Hampton and a Rebel officer, taking advantage of the terror prevailing among the white inhabitants, escaped from their master, skulked during the afternoon, and in the night came to our pickets. The next morning, May 24th, they were brought to General Butler, and there, for the first time, stood the Major-General and the fugitive slave face to face. Being carefully interrogated, it appeared that they were field-hands, the slaves of an officer in the Rebel service, who purposed taking them to Carolina to be employed in military operations there. Two of them had wives in Hampton, one a free colored woman, and they had several children in the neighborhood. Here was a new question, and a grave one, on which the Government had as yet developed no policy. In the absence of precedents or instructions, an analogy drawn from international law was applied. Under that law, contraband goods, which are directly auxiliary to military operations, cannot in time of war be imported by neutrals into an enemy's country, and may be seized as lawful prize when the attempt is made so to import them. It will be seen, that, accurately speaking, the term applies exclusively to the relation between a belligerent and a neutral, and not to the relation between belligerents. Under the strict law of nations, all the property of an enemy may be seized. Under the Common Law, the property of traitors is forfeit. The humaner usage of modern times favors the waiving of these strict rights, but allows,--without question, the seizure and confiscation of all such goods as are immediately auxiliary to military purposes. These able-bodied negroes, held as slaves, were to be employed to build breastworks, to transport or store provisions, to serve as cooks or waiters, and even to bear arms. Regarded as property, according to their master's claim, they could be efficiently used by the Rebels for the purposes of the Rebellion, and most efficiently by the Government in suppressing it. Regarded as persons, they had escaped from communities where a triumphant rebellion had trampled on the laws, and only the rights of human nature remained, and they now asked the protection of the Government, to which, in prevailing treason, they were still loyal, and which they were ready to serve as best they could.

The three negroes, being held contraband of war, were at once set to work to aid the masons in constructing a new bakehouse within the fort. Thenceforward the term "contraband" bore a new signification, with which it will pass into history, designating the negroes who had been held as slaves, now adopted under the protection of the Government. It was used in official communications at the fort. It was applied familiarly to the negroes, who stared somewhat, inquiring, "What d' ye call us that for?" Not having Wheaton's "Elements" at hand, we did not attempt an explanation. The contraband notion was adopted by Congress in the Act of July 6th, which confiscates slaves used in aiding the Insurrection. There is often great virtue in such technical phrases in shaping public opinion. They commend practical action to a class of minds little developed in the direction of the sentiments, which would be repelled by formulas of a broader and nobler import. The venerable gentleman, who wears gold spectacles and reads a conservative daily, prefers confiscation to emancipation. He is reluctant to have slaves declared freemen, but has no objection to their being declared contrabands. His whole nature rises in insurrection when Beecher preaches in a sermon that a thing ought to be done because it is a duty, but he yields gracefully when Butler issues an order commanding it to be done because it is a military necessity.

On the next day, Major John B. Cary, another Rebel officer, late principal of an academy in Hampton, a delegate to the Charleston Convention, and a seceder with General Butler from the Convention at Baltimore, came to the fort with a flag of truce, and, claiming to act as the representative of Colonel Mallory, demanded the fugitives. He reminded General Butler of his obligations under the Federal Constitution, under which he claimed to act. The ready reply was, that the Fugitive-Slave Act could not be invoked for the reclamation of fugitives from a foreign State, which Virginia claimed to be, and she must count it among the infelicities of her position, if so far at least she was taken at her word.

The three pioneer negroes were not long to be isolated from their race. There was no known channel of communication between them and their old comrades, and yet those comrades knew, or believed with the certainty of knowledge, how they had been received. If inquired of whether more were coming, their reply was, that, if they were not sent back, others would understand that they were among friends, and more would come the next day. Such is the mysterious spiritual telegraph which runs through the slave population. Proclaim an edict of emancipation in the hearing of a single slave on the Potomac, and in a few days it will be known by his brethren on the Gulf. So, on the night of the Big Bethel affair, a squad of negroes, meeting our soldiers, inquired anxiously the way to "the freedom fort."

The means of communicating with the fort from the open country became more easy, when, on the 24th of May, (the same day on which the first movement was made from Washington into Virginia,) the Second New York Regiment made its encampment on the Segar farm, lying near the bridge which connected the fort with the main-land, an encampment soon enlarged by the First Vermont and other New York regiments. On Sunday morning, May 26th, eight negroes stood before the quarters of General Butler, waiting for an audience.

They were examined in part by the Hon. Mr. Ashley, M.C. from Ohio, then a visitor at the fort. On May 27th, forty-seven negroes of both sexes and all ages, from three months to eighty-five years, among whom were half a dozen entire families, came in one squad. Another lot of a dozen good field-hands arrived the same day; and then they continued to come by twenties, thirties, and forties. They were assigned buildings outside of the fort or tents within. They were set to work as servants to officers, or to store provisions landed from vessels,--thus relieving us of the fatigue duty which we had previously done, except that of dragging and mounting columbiads on the ramparts of the fort, a service which some very warm days have impressed on my memory.

On the 27th of May, the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the First Vermont, and some New York regiments made an advance movement and occupied Newport News, (a promontory named for Captain Christopher Newport, the early explorer,) so as more effectually to enforce the blockade of James River. There, too, negroes came in, who were employed as servants to the officers. One of them, when we left the fort, more fortunate than his comrades, and aided by a benevolent captain, eluded the vigilance of the Provost Marshal, and is now the curiosity of a village in the neighborhood of Boston.

It was now time to call upon the Government for a policy in dealing with slave society thus disrupted and disorganized. Elsewhere, even under the shadow of the Capitol, the action of military officers had been irregular, and in some cases in palpable violation of personal rights. An order of General McDowell excluded all slaves from the lines. Sometimes officers assumed to decide the question whether a negro was a slave, and deliver him to a claimant, when, certainly in the absence of martial law, they had no authority in the premises, under the Act of Congress,--that power being confided to commissioners and marshals. As well might a member of Congress or a State sheriff usurp the function. Worse yet, in defiance of the Common Law, they made color a presumptive proof of bondage. In one case a free negro was delivered to a claimant under this process, more summary than any which the Fugitive-Slave Act provides. The colonel of a Massachusetts regiment showed some practical humor in dealing with a pertinacious claimant who asserted title to a negro found within his lines, and had brought a policeman along with him to aid in enforcing it. The shrewd colonel, (a Democrat he is,) retaining the policeman, put both the claimant and claimed outside of the lines together to try their fleetness. The negro proved to be the better gymnast and was heard of no more. This capricious treatment of the subject was fraught with serious difficulties as well as personal injuries, and it needed to be displaced by an authorized system.

On the 27th of May, General Butler, having in a previous communication reported his interview with Major Cary, called the attention of the War Department to the subject in a formal despatch,--indicating the hostile purposes for which the negroes had been or might be successfully used, stating the course he had pursued in employing them and recording expenses and services, and suggesting pertinent military, political, and humane considerations. The Secretary of War, under date of the 30th of May, replied, cautiously approving the course of General Butler, and intimating distinctions between interfering with the relations of persons held to service and refusing to surrender them to their alleged masters, which it is not easy to reconcile with well-defined views of the new exigency, or at least with a desire to express them. The note was characterized by diplomatic reserve which it will probably be found difficult long to maintain.

The ever-recurring question continued to press for solution. On the 6th of July the Act of Congress was approved, declaring that any person claiming the labor of another to be due to him, and permitting such party to be employed in any military or naval service whatsoever against the Government of the United States, shall forfeit his claim to such labor, and proof of such employment shall thereafter be a full answer to the claim. This act was designed for the direction of the civil magistrate, and not for the limitation of powers derived from military law. That law, founded on _salus republicae_, transcends all codes, and lies outside of forms and statutes. John Quincy Adams, almost prophesying as he expounded, declared, in 1842, that under it slavery might be abolished. Under it, therefore, Major-General Fremont, in a recent proclamation, declared the slaves of all persons within his department, who were in arms against the Government, to be freemen, and under it has given title-deeds of manumission. Subsequently President Lincoln limited the proclamation to such slaves as are included in the Act of Congress, namely, the slaves of Rebels used in directly hostile service. The country had called for Jacksonian courage, and its first exhibition was promptly suppressed. If the revocation was made in deference to protests from Kentucky, it seems, that, while the loyal citizens of Missouri appeared to approve the decisive measure, they were overruled by the more potential voice of other communities who professed to understand their affairs better than they did themselves. But if, as is admitted, the commanding officer, in the plenitude of military power, was authorized to make the order within his department, all human beings included in the proclamation thereby acquired a vested title to their freedom, of which neither Congress nor President could dispossess them. No conclusive behests of law necessitating the limitation, it cannot rest on any safe reasons of military policy. The one slave who carries his master's knapsack on a march contributes far less to the efficiency of the Rebel army than the one hundred slaves who hoe corn on his plantation with which to replenish its commissariat. We have not yet emerged from the fine-drawn distinctions of peaceful times. We may imprison or slaughter a Rebel, but we may not unloose his hold on a person he has claimed as a slave. We may seize all his other property without question, lands, houses, cattle, jewels; but his asserted property in man is more sacred than the gold which overlay the Ark of the Covenant, and we may not profane it. This reverence for things assumed to be sacred, which are not so, cannot long continue. The Government can well turn away from the enthusiast, however generous his impulses, who asks the abolition of slavery on general principles of philanthropy, for the reason that it already has work enough on its hands. It may not change the objects of the war, but it must of necessity at times shift its tactics and its instruments, as the exigency demands. Its solemn and imperative duty is to look every issue, however grave and transcendent, firmly in the face; and having ascertained upon mature and conscientious reflection what is necessary to suppress the Rebellion, it must then proceed with inexorable purpose to inflict the blows where Rebellion is the weakest and under which it must inevitably fall.

On the 30th of July, General Butler, being still unprovided with adequate instructions,--the number of contrabands having now reached nine hundred,--applied to the War Department for further directions. His inquiries, inspired by good sense and humanity alike, were of the most fundamental character, and when they shall have received a full answer the war will be near its end. Assuming the slaves to have been the property of masters, he considers them waifs abandoned by their owners, in which the Government as a finder cannot, however, acquire a proprietary interest, and they have therefore reverted to the normal condition of those made in God's image, "if not free-born, yet free-manumitted, sent forth from the hand that held them, never to return." The author of that document may never win a victor's laurels on any renowned field, but, depositing it in the archives of the Government, he leaves a record in history which will outlast the traditions of battle or siege. It is proper to add, that the answer of the War Department, so far as its meaning is clear, leaves the General uninstructed as to all slaves not confiscated by the Act of Congress.

The documentary history being now completed, the personal narrative of affairs at Fortress Monroe is resumed.

The encampment of Federal troops beyond the peninsula of the fort and in the vicinity of the village of Hampton was immediately followed by an hegira of its white inhabitants, burning, as they fled, as much of the bridge as they could. On the 28th of May, a detachment of troops entered the village and hoisted the stars and stripes on the house of Colonel Mallory. Picket-guards occupied it intermittently during the month of June. It was not until the first day of July that a permanent encampment was made there, consisting of the Third Massachusetts Regiment, which moved from the fort, the Fourth, which moved from Newport News, and the Naval Brigade, all under the command of Brigadier-General Pierce,--the camp being informally called Camp Greble, in honor of the lieutenant of that name who fell bravely in the disastrous affair of Big Bethel. Here we remained until July 16th, when, our term of enlistment having expired, we bade adieu to Hampton, its ancient relics, its deserted houses, its venerable church, its trees and gardens, its contrabands, all so soon to be wasted and scattered by the torch of Virginia Vandals. We passed over the bridge, the rebuilding of which was completed the day before, marched to the fort, exchanged our rifle muskets for an older pattern, listened to a farewell address from General Butler, bade good-bye to Colonel Dimick, and embarked for Boston. It was during this encampment at Hampton, and two previous visits, somewhat hurried, while as yet it was without a permanent guard, that my personal knowledge of the negroes, of their feelings, desires, aspirations, capacities, and habits of life was mainly obtained.

A few words of local history and description may illustrate the narrative. Hampton is a town of considerable historic interest. First among civilized men the illustrious adventurer Captain John Smith with his comrades visited its site in 1607, while exploring the mouth of James River to find a home for the first colonists. Here they smoked the calumet of peace with an Indian tribe. To the neighboring promontory, where they found good anchorage and hospitality, they gave the name of Point Comfort, which it still bears. Hampton, though a settlement was commenced there in 1610, did not become a town until 1705. Hostile fleets have twice appeared before it. The first time was in October, 1775, when some tenders sent by Lord Dunmore to destroy it were repulsed by the citizens, aided by the Culpepper riflemen. Then and there was the first battle of the Revolution in Virginia. Again in June, 1813, it was attacked by Admiral Cockburn and General Beckwith, and scenes of pillage followed, dishonorable to the British soldiery. Jackson, in his address to his army just before the Battle of New Orleans, conjured his soldiers to remember Hampton. Until the recent conflagration, it abounded in ancient relics. Among them was St. John's Church, the main body of which was of imported brick, and built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The fury of Secession irreverently destroyed this memorial of antiquity and religion, which even a foreign soldiery had spared. One inscription in the graveyard surrounding the church is as early as 1701, and even earlier dates are found on tombstones in the fields a mile distant. The Court-House, a clumsy old structure, in which was the law-office of Colonel Mallory, contained judicial records of a very early colonial period. Some, which I examined, bore date of 1634. Several old houses, with spacious rooms and high ornamented ceilings, gave evidence that at one time they had been occupied by citizens of considerable taste and rank. A friend of mine found among the rubbish of a deserted house an English illustrated edition of "Paradise Lost," of the date of 1725, and Boyle's Oxford edition of "The Epistles of Phalaris," famous in classical controversy, printed in 1718. The proximity of Fortress Monroe, of the fashionable watering-place of Old Point, and of the anchorage of Hampton Roads, has contributed to the interest of the town. To this region came in summer-time public men weary of their cares, army and navy officers on furlough or retired, and the gay daughters of Virginia. In front of the fort, looking seaward, was the summer residence of Floyd; between the fort and the town was that of John Tyler. President Jackson sought refuge from care and solicitation at the Rip Raps, whither he was followed by his devoted friend, Mr. Blair. So at least a contraband informed me, who said he had often seen them both there.

Nevertheless, the town bore no evidence of thrift. It looked as though it were sleepy and indolent in the best of times, having oysters for its chief merchandise. The streets were paved, but the pavements were of large irregular stones, and unevenly laid. Few houses were new, and, excepting St. John's Church, the public edifices were mean. All these have been swept away by the recent conflagration, a waste of property indefensible on any military principles. The buildings might have furnished winter-quarters for our troops, but in that climate they were not necessary for that purpose, perhaps not desirable, or, if required, could be easily replaced by temporary habitations constructed of lumber imported from the North by sea. But the Rebel chiefs had thrown themselves into heroic attitudes, and while playing the part of incendiaries, they fancied their action to be as sublime as that of the Russians at Moscow. With such a precedent of Vandalism, no ravages of our own troops can hereafter be complained of.

The prevailing exodus, leaving less than a dozen white men behind, testifies the political feelings of the people. Only two votes were thrown against the ordinance of Secession. Whatever of Union sentiment existed there had been swept away by such demagogues as Mallory, Cary, Magruder, Shiels, and Hope. Hastily as they left, they removed in most cases all their furniture, leaving only the old Virginia sideboard, too heavy to be taken away. In a few exceptional cases, from the absence of the owner or other cause, the house was still furnished; but generally nothing but old letters, torn books, newspapers, cast-off clothing, strewed the floors. Rarely have I enjoyed the hours more than when roaming from cellar to garret these tenantless houses. A deserted dwelling! How the imagination is fascinated by what may have there transpired of human joy or sorrow,--the solitary struggles of the soul for better things, the dawn and the fruition of love, the separations and reunions of families, the hearth-stone consecrated by affection and prayer, the bridal throng, the birth of new lives, the farewells to the world, the funeral train.

But more interesting and instructive were the features of slave-life which here opened to us. The negroes who remained, of whom there may have been three hundred of all ages, lived in small wooden shanties, generally in the rear of the master's house, rarely having more than one room on the lower floor, and that containing an open fireplace where the cooking for the master's family was done, tables, chairs, dishes, and the miscellaneous utensils of household life. The masters had taken with them, generally, their waiting-maids and house-servants, and had desired to carry all their slaves with them. But in the hasty preparations,--particularly where the slaves were living away from their master's close, or had a family,--it was difficult to remove them against their will, as they could skulk for a few hours and then go where they pleased. Some voluntarily left their slaves behind, not having the means to provide for them, or, anticipating a return at no distant day, desired them to stay and guard the property. The slaves who remained lived upon the little pork and corn-meal that were left and the growing vegetables. They had but little to do. The women looked after their meagre household concerns, but the men were generally idle, standing in groups, or sitting in front of the shanties talking with the women. Some began to serve our officers as soon as we were quartered in the town,--while a few others set up cake-stands upon the street.

It was necessary for the protection of the post that some breastworks should be thrown up, and a line was planned extending from the old cemetery northward to the new one, a quarter of a mile distant. Our own troops were disinclined to the labor, their time being nearly expired, and they claiming that they had done their share of fatigue duty both at the fort and at Newport News. A member of Brigadier-General Pierce's staff--an efficient officer and a humane gentleman--suggested the employment of the contrabands and the furnishing of them with rations, an expedient best for them and agreeable to us. He at once dictated a telegram to General Butler in these words:--"Shall we put the contrabands to work on the intrenchments, and will you furnish them with rations?" An affirmative answer was promptly received on Monday morning, July 8th, and that was the first day in the course of the war in which the negro was employed upon the military works of our army. It therefore marks a distinct epoch in its progress and in its relations to the colored population. The writer--and henceforth his narrative must indulge in the frequent use of the first person--was specially detailed from his post as private in Company L of the Third Regiment to collect the contrabands, record their names, ages, and the names of their masters, provide their tools, superintend their labor, and procure their rations. My comrades smiled, as I undertook the novel duty, enjoying the spectacle of a Massachusetts Republican converted into a Virginia slave-master. To me it seemed rather an opportunity to lead them from the house of bondage never to return. For, whatever may be the general duty to this race, to all such as we have in any way employed to aid our armies our national faith and our personal honor are pledged. The code of a gentleman, to say nothing of a higher law of rectitude, necessitates protection to this extent. Abandoning one of these faithful allies, who, if delivered up, would be reduced to severer servitude because of the education he had received and the services he had performed, probably to be transported to the remotest slave region as now too dangerous to remain near its borders, we should be accursed among the nations of the earth. I felt assured that from that hour, whatsoever the fortunes of the war, every one of those enrolled defenders of the Union had vindicated beyond all future question, for himself, his wife, and their issue, a title to American citizenship, and become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.