Chapter IV: Part 4

On the 8th of April, I visited a school on Ladies Island, kept in a small church on the Eustis estate, and taught by a young woman from Kingston, Massachusetts. She had manifested much persistence in going to this field, went with the first delegation, and still keeps the school which she opened in March, 1862. She taught the pupils their letters. Sixty-six were present on the day of my visit. A class of ten pupils read the story which commences on page 86th of Hillard's Second Primary Reader. One girl, Elsie, a full black, and rather ungainly withal, read so rapidly that she had to be checked,--the only case of such fast reading that I found. She assisted the teacher by taking the beginners to a corner of the room and exercising them upon an alphabet card, requiring them to give the names of letters taken out of their regular order, and with the letters making words, which they were expected to repeat after her. One class recited in Eaton's First Lessons in Arithmetic; and two or three scholars with a rod pointed out the states, lakes, and large rivers on the map of the United States, and also the different continents on the map of the world, as they were called. I saw the teacher of this school at her residence, late in the afternoon, giving familiar instruction to some ten boys and girls, all but two being under twelve years, who read the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation, and the story of Lazarus in the eleventh chapter of St. John. Elsie was one of these. Seeing me taking notes, she looked archly at the teacher, and whispered,--"he's putting me in the book"; and as Elsie guessed, so I do. The teacher was instructing her pupils in some dates and facts which have had much to do with our history. The questions and answers, in which all the pupils joined, were these:--

"Where were slaves first brought to this country?"

"Virginia."

"When?"

"1620."

"Who brought them?"

"Dutchmen."

"Who came the same year to Plymouth, Massachusetts?"

"Pilgrims."

"Did they bring slaves?"

"No."

A teacher in Beaufort put these questions, to which answers were given in a loud tone by the whole school:--

"What country do you live in?"

"United States."

"What State?"

"South Carolina."

"What island?"

"Port Royal."

"What town?"

"Beaufort."

"Who is your Governor?"

"General Saxton."

"Who is your President?"

"Abraham Lincoln."

"What has he done for you?"

"He's freed us."

There were four schools in the town of Beaufort, all of which I visited, each having an average attendance of from sixty to ninety pupils, and each provided with two teachers. In some of them writing was taught. But it is unnecessary to describe them, as they were very much like the others. There is, besides, at Beaufort an industrial school, which meets two afternoons in a week, and is conducted by a lady from New York, with some dozen ladies to assist her. There were present, the afternoon I visited it, one hundred and thirteen girls from six to twenty years of age, all plying the needle, some with pieces of patchwork, and others with aprons, pillow-cases, or handkerchiefs.

Though I have never been on the school-committee, I accepted invitations to address the schools on these visits, and particularly plied the pupils with questions, so as to catch the tone of their minds; and I have rarely heard children answer with more readiness and spirit. We had a dialogue substantially as follows:--

"Children, what are you going to do when you grow up?"

"Going to work, Sir."

"On what?"

"Cotton and corn, Sir."

"What are you going to do with the corn?"

"Eat it."

"What are you going to do with the cotton?"

"Sell it."

"What are you going to do with the money you get for it?"

One boy answered in advance of the rest,--

"Put it in my pocket, Sir."

"That won't do. What's better than that?"

"Buy clothes, Sir."

"What else will you buy?"

"Shoes, Sir."

"What else are you going to do with your money?"

There was some hesitation at this point. Then the question was put,--

"What are you going to do Sundays?"

"Going to meeting."

"What are you going to do there?"

"Going to sing."

"What else?"

"Hear the parson."

"Who's going to pay him?"

One boy said,--"Government pays him"; but the rest answered,--

"We's pays him."

"Well, when you grow up, you'll probably get married, as other people do, and you'll have your little children; now, what will you do with them?"

There was a titter at this question; but the general response came,--

"Send 'em to school, Sir."

"Well, who'll pay the teacher?"

"We's pays him."

One who listens to such answers can hardly think that there is any natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years the ideas and habits of good citizens.

The children are cheerful, and, in most of the schools, well-behaved, except that it is not easy to keep them from whispering and talking. They are joyous, and you can see the boys after school playing the soldier, with corn-stalks for guns. The memory is very susceptible in them,--too much so, perhaps, as it is ahead of the reasoning faculty.

The labor of the season has interrupted attendance on the schools, the parents being desirous of having the children aid them in planting and cultivating their crops, and it not being thought best to allow the teaching to interfere in any way with industrious habits.

A few freedmen, who had picked up an imperfect knowledge of reading, have assisted our teachers, though a want of proper training materially detracts from their usefulness in this respect. Ned and Uncle Cyrus have already been mentioned. The latter, a man of earnest piety, has died since my visit. Anthony kept four schools on Hilton Head Island last summer and autumn, being paid at first by the superintendents, and afterwards by the negroes themselves; but in November he enlisted in the negro regiment. Hettie was another of these. She assisted Barnard at Edisto last spring, continued to teach after the Edisto people were brought to St. Helena village, and one day brought some of her pupils to the school at the Baptist Church, saying to the teachers there that she could carry them no farther. They could read their letters and words of one syllable. Hettie had belonged to a planter on Wadmelaw Island, a kind old gentleman, a native of Rhode Island, and about the only citizen of Charleston who, when Samuel Hoar went on his mission to South Carolina, stood up boldly for his official and personal protection. Hettie had been taught to read by his daughter; and let this be remembered to the honor of the young woman.

Such are the general features of the schools as they met my eye. The most advanced classes, and these are but little ahead of the rest, can read simple stories and the plainer passages of Scripture; and they could even pursue self-instruction, if the schools were to be suspended. The knowledge they have thus gained can never be extirpated. They could read with much profit a newspaper specially prepared for them and adapted to their condition. They are learning that the world is not bounded north by Charleston, south by Savannah, west by Columbia, and east by the sea, with dim visions of New York on this planet or some other,--about their conception of geography when we found them. They are acquiring the knowledge of figures with which to do the business of life. They are singing the songs of freemen. Visit their schools; remember that a little more than a twelve-month ago they knew not a letter, and that for generations it has been a crime to teach their race; then contemplate what is now transpiring, and you have a scene which prophets and sages would have delighted to witness. It will be difficult to find equal progress in an equal period since the morning rays of Christian truth first lighted the hill-sides of Judea. I have never looked on St. Peter's, or beheld the glories of art which Michel Angelo has wrought or traced; but to my mind the spectacle of those poor souls struggling in darkness and bewilderment to catch the gleams of the upper and better light transcends in moral grandeur anything that has ever come from mortal hands.

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Next as to _industry_. The laborers, during their first year under the new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with the proprietorship of land. House-servants, who were at first particularly set against it, now generally prefer it. The laborers have collected the pieces of the gins which they destroyed on the flight of their masters, the ginning being obnoxious work, repaired them, and ginned the cotton on the promise of wages. Except upon plantations in the vicinity of camps, where other labor is more immediately remunerative, and an unhealthy excitement prevails, there is a general disposition to cultivate it. The culture of the cotton is voluntary, the only penalty for not engaging in it being the imposition of a rent for the tenement and land adjacent thereto occupied by the negro, not exceeding two dollars per month. Both the Government and private individuals, who have become owners of one-fourth of the land by the recent tax-sales, pay twenty-five cents for a standard day's-work, which may, by beginning early, be performed by a healthy and active hand by noon; and the same was the case with the tasks under the slave-system on very many of the plantations. As I was riding through one of Mr. Philbrick's fields one morning, I counted fifty persons at work who belonged to one plantation. This gentleman, who went out with the first delegation, and at the same time gave largely to the benevolent contributions for the enterprise, was the leading purchaser at the tax-sales, and combining a fine humanity with honest sagacity and close calculation, no man is so well fitted to try the experiment. He bought thirteen plantations, and on these has had planted and cultivated eight hundred and sixteen acres of cotton where four hundred and ninety-nine and one twelve-hundredth acres were cultivated last year,--a larger increase, however, than will generally be found in other districts, due mainly to prompter payments. The general superintendent of Port Royal Wand said to me,--"We have to restrain rather than to encourage the negroes to take land for cotton." The general superintendent of Hilton Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near the camps. A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers. He had charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the trees for that purpose.

The laborers do less work, perhaps, than a Yankee would think they might do; but they do about as much as he himself would do, after a residence of a few years in the same climate, and when he had ceased to work under the influence of Northern habits. Northern men have sometimes been unjust to the South, when comparing the results of labor in the different sections. God never intended that a man should toil under a tropical sun with the same energy and constancy as in our bracing latitude. There has been less complaint this year than last of "a pain in the small of the back," or of "a fever in the head,"--in other words, less _shamming_. The work has been greatly deranged by the draft, some features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military authorities. The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by the women, children, and disabled men. It has been suggested that field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no honest work is dishonorable in man or woman. But this matter may be left to regulate itself. Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not yet fitted for the needle or the book.

The negroes were also showing their capacity to organize labor and apply capital to it. Harry, to whom I referred in my second report, as "my faithful guide and attendant, who had done for me more service than any white man could render," with funds of his own, and some borrowed money, bought at the recent tax-sales a small farm of three hundred and thirteen acres for three hundred and five dollars. He was to plant sixteen and a half acres of cotton, twelve and a half of corn, and one and a half of potatoes. I rode through his farm on the 10th of April, my last day in the territory, and one-third of his crop was then in. Besides some servant's duty to an officer, for which he is well paid, he does the work of a full hand on his place. He hires one woman and two men, one of the latter being old and only a three-quarters hand. He has two daughters, sixteen and seventeen years of age, one of whom is likewise only a three-quarters hand. His wife works also, of whom he said, "She's the best hand I got"; and if Celia is only as smart with her hoe as I know her to be with her tongue, Harry's estimate must be right. He has a horse twenty-five years old and blind in both eyes, whom he guides with a rope,--carrying on farming, I thought, somewhat under difficulties. Harry lives in the house of the former overseer, and delights, though not boastingly, in his position as a landed proprietor. He has promised to write me, or rather dictate a letter, giving an account of the progress of his crop. He has had much charge of Government property, and when Captain Hooper, of General Saxton's staff, was coming North last autumn, Harry proposed to accompany him; but at last, of his own accord, gave up the project, saying, "It'll not do for all two to leave together."

Another case of capacity for organization should be noted. The Government is building twenty-one houses for the Edisto people, eighteen feet by fourteen, with two rooms, each provided with a swinging board-window, and the roof projecting a little as a protection from rain. The journey-carpenters are seventeen colored men, who have fifty cents per day without rations, working ten hours. They are under the direction of Frank Barnwell, a freedman, who receives twenty dollars a month. Rarely have I talked with a more intelligent contractor. It was my great regret that I had not time to visit the village of improved houses near the Hilton Head camp, which General Mitchell had extemporized, and to which he gave so much of the noble enthusiasm of his last days.

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Next as to the _development of manhood_. This has been shown, in the first place, in the prevalent disposition to acquire land. It did not appear upon our first introduction to these people, and they did not seem to understand us when we used to tell them that we wanted them to own land. But it is now an active desire. At the recent tax-sales, six out of forty-seven plantations sold were bought by them, comprising two thousand five hundred and ninety-five acres, sold for twenty-one hundred and forty-five dollars. In other cases the negroes had authorized the superintendent to bid for them, but the land was reserved by the United States. One of the purchases was that made by Harry, noted above. The other five were made by the negroes on the plantations combining the funds they had saved from the sale of their pigs, chickens, and eggs, and from the payments made to them for work,--they then dividing off the tract peaceably among themselves. On one of these, where Kit, before mentioned, is the leading spirit, there are twenty-three field-hands, who are equivalent to eighteen full hands. They have planted and are cultivating sixty-three acres of cotton, fifty of corn, six of potatoes, with as many more to be planted, four and a half of cow-peas, three of pea-nuts, and one and a half of rice. These facts are most significant. The instinct for land--to have one spot on earth where a man may stand, and whence no human being can of right drive him--is one of the most conservative elements of our nature; and a people who have it in any fair degree will never be nomads or vagabonds.

This developing manhood is further seen in their growing consciousness of rights, and their readiness to defend themselves, even when assailed by white men. The former slaves of a planter, now at Beaufort, who was a resident of New York when the war broke out, have generally left the plantation, suspicious of his presence, saying that they will not be his bondmen, and fearing that in some way he may hold them, if they remain on it. A remarkable case of the assertion of rights occurred one day during my visit. Two white soldiers, with a corporal, went on Sunday to Coosaw Island, where one of the soldiers, having a gun, shot a chicken belonging to a negro. The negroes rushed out and wrested the gun from the corporal, to whom the soldier had handed it, thinking that the negroes would not take it from an officer. They then carried it to the superintendent, who took it to head-quarters, where an order was given for the arrest of the trespasser. Other instances might be added, but these are sufficient.

Another evidence of developing manhood appears in their desire for the comforts and conveniences of household life. The Philadelphia society, for the purpose of maintaining reasonable prices, has a store on St. Helena Island, which is under the charge of Friend Hunn, of the good fellowship of William Penn. He was once fined in Delaware three thousand dollars for harboring and assisting fugitive slaves; but he now harbors and assists them at a much cheaper rate. Though belonging to a society which is the advocate of peace, his tone is quite as warlike as that of the world's people. In this store alone--and there are others on the island, carried on by private enterprise--two thousand dollars' worth of goods are sold monthly. To be sure, a rather large proportion of these consists of molasses and sugar, "sweetening," as the negroes call it, being in great demand, and four barrels of molasses having been sold the day of my visit. But there is also a great demand for plates, knives, forks, tin ware, and better clothing, including even hoop-skirts. Negro-cloth, as it is called, osnaburgs, russet-colored shoes,--in short, the distinctive apparel formerly dealt out to them, as a uniform allowance,--are very generally rejected. But there is no article of household-furniture or wearing apparel, used by persons of moderate means among us, which they will not purchase, when they are allowed the opportunity of labor and earning wages. What a market the South would open under the new system! It would set all the mills and workshops astir. Four millions of people would become purchasers of all the various articles of manufacture and commerce, in place of the few coarse, simple necessaries, laid in for them in gross by the planters. Here is the solution of the vexed industrial question. The indisposition to labor is overcome in a healthy nature by instincts and motives of superior force, such as the love of life, the desire to be well clothed and fed, the sense of security derived from provision for the future, the feeling of self-respect, the love of family and children, and the convictions of duty. These all exist in the negro, in a state of greater or less development. To give one or two examples. One man brought Captain Hooper seventy dollars in silver, to keep for him, which he had obtained from selling pigs and chickens,--thus providing for the future. Soldiers of Colonel Higginson's regiment, having confidence in the same officer, intrusted him, when they were paid off, with seven hundred dollars, to be transmitted by him to their wives, and this besides what they had sent home in other ways,--showing the family-feeling to be active and strong in them. They have also the social and religious inspirations to labor. Thus, early in our occupation of Hilton Head, they took up, of their own accord, a collection to pay for the candles for their evening meetings, feeling that it was not right for the Government longer to provide them. The result was a contribution of two dollars and forty-eight cents. They had just fled from their masters, and had received only a small pittance of wages, and this little sum was not unlike the two mites which the widow cast into the treasury. Another collection was taken, last June, in the church on St. Helena Island, upon the suggestion of the pastor that they should share in the expenses of worship. Fifty-two dollars was the result,--not a bad collection for some of our Northern churches. I have seen these people where they are said to be lowest, and sad indeed are some features of their lot, yet with all earnestness and confidence I enter my protest against the wicked satire of Carlyle.

Is there not here some solution of the question of prejudice or caste which has troubled so many good minds? When these people can no longer be used as slaves, men will try to see how they can make the most out of them as freemen. Your Irishman, who now works as a day-laborer, honestly thinks that he hates the negro; but when the war is over, he will have no objection to going South and selling him groceries and household-implements at fifty per cent. advance on New-York prices, or to hiring him to raise cotton for twenty-five or fifty cents a day. Our prejudices, under any reasonable adjustment of the social system, readily accommodate themselves to our interests, even without much aid from the moral sentiments.

Let those who would study well this social question, or who in public trusts are charged with its solution, be most careful here. Every motive in the minds of these people, whether of instinct, desire, or duty, must be addressed. All the elements of human nature must be appealed to, physical, moral, intellectual, social, and religious. Imperfect indeed is any system which, like that at New Orleans, offers wages, but does not welcome the teacher. It is of little moment whether three dollars or thirty per month be paid the laborer, so long as there is no school to bind both parent and child to civil society with new hopes and duties.

There are some vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them, and truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite likely to accompany the transition-state. Besides, the present disturbed and unorganized condition of things is not favorable to the rigid virtues. But inferences from this must not be pressed too far. When I was a private soldier in Virginia, as one of a three-months' regiment, we used to bide from each other our little comforts and delicacies, even our dishes and clothing, or they were sure to disappear. But we should have ridiculed an adventurous thinker upon the characteristics of races and classes, who should have leaped therefrom to the conclusion that all white men or all soldiers are thieves. And what inferences might not one draw, discreditable to all traders and manufacturers, from the universal adulteration of articles of food! These people, it is said, are disposed to falsehood in order to get rations and small benefits,--a natural vice which comes with slavery, and too often attends on poverty without slavery. Those of most demonstrative piety are rarely better than the rest, not, indeed, hypocritical, but satisfying their consciences by self-depreciation and indulgence in emotion,--psychological manifestations which one may find in more advanced communities. They show no special gratitude to us for liberating them from bonds. Nor do they ordinarily display much exhilaration over their new condition,--being quite unlike the Italian revolutionist who used to put on his toga, walk in the forum, and personate Brutus and Cassius. Their appreciation of their better lot is chiefly seen in their dread of a return of their masters, in their excitement when an attack is feared, in their anxious questionings while the assault on Charleston was going on, and in their desire to get their friends and relatives away from the Rebels,--an appreciation of freedom, if not ostentatious, at least sensible.

But away with such frivolous modes of dealing with the rights of races to self-development! Because Englishmen may be classified as hard and conceited, Frenchmen as capricious, Austrians as dull, and the people of one other nation are sometimes thought to be vainglorious, shall these therefore be slaves? And where is that model race which shall sway them all? A people may have grave defects, but it may not therefore be rightfully disabled.

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During my recent visit, I had an opportunity, on three different occasions, to note carefully Colonel T.W. Higginson's colored regiment, known as the First Regiment of South-Carolina Volunteers. Major-General Hunter's first regiment was mainly made up of conscripts, drafted May 12th, 1862, and disbanded August 11th, three months afterwards, there being no funds wherewith to pay them, and the discharged men going home to find the cotton and corn they had planted overgrown with weeds. On the 10th of October, General Saxton, being provided with competent authority to raise five thousand colored troops, began to recruit a regiment. His authority from the War Department bore date August 25th, and the order conferring it states the object to be "to guard the plantations, and protect the inhabitants from captivity and murder." This was the first clear authority ever given by the Government to raise a negro regiment in this war. There were, indeed, some ambiguous words in the instructions of Secretary Cameron to General Sherman, when the original expedition went to Port Royal, authorizing him to organize the negroes into companies and squads for such services as they might be fitted for, but this not to mean a general arming for military service. Secretary Stanton, though furnishing muskets and red trousers to General Hunter's regiment, did not think the authority sufficient to justify the payment of the regiment. The first regiment, as raised by General Saxton, numbered four hundred and ninety-nine men when Colonel Higginson took command of it on the 1st of December; and on the 19th of January, 1863, it had increased to eight hundred and forty-nine. It has made three expeditions to Florida and Georgia,--one before Colonel Higginson assumed the command, described in Mrs. Stowe's letter to the women of England, and two under Colonel Higginson, one of which was made in January up the St. Mary's, and the other in March to Jacksonville, which it occupied for a few days until an evacuation was ordered from head-quarters. The men are volunteers, having been led to enlist by duty to their race, to their kindred still in bonds, and to us, their allies. Their drill is good, and their time excellent. They have borne themselves well in their expeditions, quite equalling the white regiments in skirmishing. In _morale_ they seemed very much like white men, and with about the same proportion of good and indifferent soldiers. Some I saw of the finest metal, like Robert Sutton, whom Higginson describes in his report as "the real conductor of the whole expedition at the St. Mary's," and Sergeant Hodges, a master-carpenter, capable of directing the labors of numerous journeymen. Another said, addressing a meeting at Beaufort, that he had been restless, nights, thinking of the war and of his people,--that, when he heard of the regiment being formed, he felt that his time to act had come, and that it was his duty to enlist,--that he did not fight for his rations and pay, but for wife, children, and people.

These men, as already intimated, are very much like other men, easily depressed, and as easily reanimated by words of encouragement. Many have been reluctant to engage in military service,--their imagination investing it with the terrors of instant and certain death. But this reluctance has passed away with participation in active service, with the adventure and inspiration of a soldier's life, and the latent manhood has recovered its rightful sway. Said a superintendent who was of the first delegation to Tort Royal in March, 1862,--a truthful man, and not given to rose-colored views,--"I did not have faith in arming negroes, when I visited the North last autumn, but I have now. They will be not mere machines, but real tigers, when aroused; and I should not wish to face them." One amusing incident may be mentioned. A man deserted from the regiment, was discovered hidden in a chimney in the district where he had lived, was taken back to camp, went to Florida in Higginson's first expedition, bore his part well in the skirmishes, became excited with the service, was made a sergeant, and, receiving a furlough on his return, went to the plantation where he had hid, and said he would not take five thousand dollars for his place.

But more significant, as showing the success of the experiment, is the change of feeling among the white soldiers towards the negro regiment, a change due in part to the just policy of General Saxton, in part to the President's Proclamation of January 1st, which has done much to clear the atmosphere everywhere within the army-lines, but more than all to the soldierly conduct of the negroes themselves during their expeditions. I had one excellent opportunity to note this change. On the 6th of April, Colonel Higginson's regiment was assigned to picket-duty on Port Royal Island,--the first active duty it had performed on the Sea Islands,--and was to relieve the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth. When, after a march of ten miles, it reached the advanced picket-station, there were about two hundred soldiers of the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth awaiting orders to proceed to Beaufort. I said, in a careless tone, to one of the Pennsylvania soldiers, who was looking at Higginson's regiment as it stood in line,--

"Isn't this rather new, to be relieved by a negro regiment?"

"All right," said he. "They've as much right to fight for themselves as I have to fight for them."

A squad of half a dozen men stood by, making no dissent, and accepting him as their spokesman. Moving in another direction, I said to a soldier,--

"What do you think of that regiment?"

The answer was,--

"All right. I'd rather they'd shoot the Rebels than have the Rebels shoot me"; and none of the by-standers dissented.

As one of the negro companies marched off the field to picket a station at the Ferry, they passed within a few feet of some twenty of the Pennsylvania soldiers, just formed into line preparatory to marching to Beaufort. The countenances of the latter, which I watched, exhibited no expression of disgust, dislike, or disapprobation, only of curiosity. Other white soldiers gave to the weary negroes the hominy left from the morning meal. The Major of the Fifty-Fifth, highest in command of the relieved regiment, explained very courteously to Colonel Higginson the stations and duties of the pickets, and proffered any further aid desired. This was, it is true, an official duty, but there are more ways than one in which to perform even an official duty. I rode back to Beaufort, part of the way, in company with a captain of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, who was the officer of the day. He said "he wasn't much of a negro-man, but he had no objection to their doing our fighting." He pronounced the word as spelled with two _g_s; but I prefer to retain the good English. Colonel Montgomery, who had a partly filled regiment, most of whom were conscripts, said that on his return from Jacksonville he sent a squad of his men ashore in charge of some prisoners he had taken. Some white soldiers seeing them approach from the wharf, one said,--

"What are those coming?"

"Negro soldiers," (word pronounced as in the former case,) was the answer.

"Damn 'em!" was the ejaculation.

But as they approached nearer, "What have they got with 'em?" was inquired.

"Why, some Secesh prisoners."

"Bully for the negroes!" (the same pronunciation as before,) was then the response from all.

So quick was the transition, when it was found that the negroes had demonstrated their usefulness! It is, perhaps, humiliating to remember that such an unreasonable and unpatriotic prejudice has at any time existed; but it is never worth while to suppress the truth of history. This prejudice has been effectually broken in the Free States; and one of the pageants of this epoch was the triumphal march through Boston, on the 28th of May, on its way to embark for Port Royal, of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the first regiment of negro soldiers which the Free States have sent to the war. On the day previous, May 27th, a far different scene transpired on the banks of the Mississippi. Two black regiments, enlisted some months before in Louisiana under the order of Major-General Butler, both with line and one with field officers of their own lineage, made charge after charge on the batteries of Port Hudson, and were mown down like summer's grass, the survivors, many with mutilated limbs, closing up the thinned ranks and pressing on again, careless of life, and mindful only of honor and duty, with a sublimity of courage unsurpassed in the annals of war, and leaving there to all mankind an immortal record for themselves and their race.

I cannot here forbear a momentary tribute to Wentworth Higginson. Devoting himself heroically to his great work, absorbed in its duties, and bearing his oppressive responsibility as the leader of a regiment in which to a great extent are now involved the fortunes of a race, he adds another honorable name to the true chivalry of our time.

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Homeward-bound, I stopped for two days at Fortress Monroe, and was again among the familiar scenes of my soldier-life. It was there that Major-General Butler, first of all the generals in the army of the Republic, and anticipating even Republican statesmen, had clearly pointed to the cause of the war. At Craney Island I met two accomplished women of the Society of Friends, who, on a most cheerless spot, and with every inconvenience, were teaching the children of the freedmen. Two good men, one at the fort and the other at Norfolk, were distributing the laborers on farms in the vicinity, and providing them with implements and seeds which the benevolent societies had furnished. Visiting Hampton, I recognized, in the shanties built upon the charred ruins, the familiar faces of those who, in the early days of the war, had been for a brief period under my charge. Their hearty greetings to one whom they remembered as the first to point them to freedom and cheer them with its prospect could hardly be received without emotion. But there is no time to linger over these scenes.

* * * * *

Such are some of the leading features in the condition of the freedmen, particularly at Port Royal. The enterprise for their aid, begun in doubt, is no longer a bare hope or possibility. It is a fruition and a consummation. The negroes will work for a living. They will fight for their freedom. They are adapted to civil society. As a people, they are not exempt from the frailties of our common humanity, nor from the vices which hereditary bondage always superadds to these. As it is said to take three generations to subdue a freeman completely to a slave, so it may not be possible in a single generation to restore the pristine manhood. One who expects to find in emancipated slaves perfect men and women, or to realize in them some fair dream of an ideal race, will meet disappointment; but there is nothing in their nature or condition to daunt the Christian patriot; rather, there is everything to cheer and fortify his faith. They have shown capacity for knowledge, for free industry, for subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly fortitude, for social and family relations, for religious culture and aspirations; and these qualities, when stirred and sustained by the incitements and rewards of a just society, and combining with the currents of our continental civilization, will, under the guidance of a benevolent Providence which forgets neither them nor us, make them a constantly progressive race, and secure them ever after from the calamity of another enslavement, and ourselves from the worse calamity of being again their oppressors.

* * * * *

NO AND YES.

I watched her at her spinning;
And this was my beginning
Of wooing and of winning.

But when a maid opposes,
And throws away your roses,
You say the case forecloses.

Yet sorry wit one uses,
Who loves and thinks he loses
Because a maid refuses.

For by her once denying
She only means complying
Upon a second trying.

When first I said, in pleading,
"Behold, my love lies bleeding!"
She heard me half unheeding.

When afterward I told her,
And blamed her growing colder,--
She dropped upon my shoulder.

Had I a doubt? That quelled it:
Her very look dispelled it,
I caught her hand, and held it.

Along the lane I led her,
And while her cheeks grew redder,
I sued outright to wed her.

Good end from bad beginning!
My wooing came to winning,--
And still I watch her spinning.

* * * * *

THE MATHER SAFE.

The service I was able to render an official personage connected with ----College in New England procured me access to the library belonging to that institution. In common with many of my fellow-citizens, I had previously enjoyed the pleasure of responding to circulars petitioning for money to buy books for interment in this choice literary catacomb; nay, I was even allowed the satisfaction of an annual stare at them through an iron grating, and of reading a placard to the effect that nobody was allowed to enter an alcove or take down a volume. As it occurred to me that the generous donors could not object to add one more to the select half-dozen or so, who, by having the privilege of the shelves, could really use the library, I demanded this favor of the gentleman who desired to recompense me for what I had done for him. The Librarian, who valued books as things capable of being locked up in cells like criminals, there to figure numerically to the confusion of rival institutions, was manifestly disturbed when I presented my credentials. The authority, however, was not to be questioned;--I was to be admitted to the library at any hour of the day; and I took care to drop a civil expression to imply my estimation of the privilege and my purpose of enjoying it.

Wanting the leisure to attempt that ponderous undertaking known as "a course of reading," it became my habit to browse about the building upon Saturday afternoons, and finally to establish myself, with whatever authors I had selected, in a certain retired alcove devoted to the metaphysicians. This comfortable nook opens just behind Crawford's bust of the late President T----, and is nearly opposite the famous Mather Safe. As it is possible that I am addressing some who are not graduates of ---- College, nor familiar with its library, it may be well to say a word of the history of the spacious and ancient coffer to which allusion is made.

The Mather Safe--which, by the way, is not of iron, but of oak heavily bound with that metal--is said to have been among the possessions of the author of the "Magnalia." Its last private proprietor was a collateral descendant of the Mathers, an eccentric character, popularly known as Miser Farrel. As Farrel was a bachelor, and had the reputation of being enormously rich, the College authorities of his day were accustomed to treat him with distinguished consideration, and went so far, I believe, as to vote him some minor degree. What effect these academic blandishments may have had upon their object cannot at present be determined. For when the day came for the long-expected will to be opened, it was found that the old gentleman had bequeathed to the College only his Mather Safe, with certain papers carefully let into the wood-work in one corner of the same,--which papers were not to be removed or opened for a hundred years.

It may be conceived that this bulky benefaction was not accepted with the best grace, particularly as the testator made no provision for considerable expense necessarily incurred in moving and setting it up in the library. Yet, not satisfied with this culpable negligence, Mr. Farrel had affixed still other conditions to the acceptance of his gift. He had caused two massive locks to be put upon the Mather Safe, of which he enjoined that the respective keys should be forever held by the President and Treasurer of the College, to the end that neither could have access to its contents except in the presence of the other. Moreover, he required that the Safe should be used only as a receptacle for packages which the depositors desired to keep from the world for at least fifty years. Of course no right-minded corporation would have endured this posthumous fussiness, were it not for the mysterious papers left in the Safe,--these being considered instruments whereby immense possessions would finally come to the College. But, as their worthy friend, however niggardly in other respects, had taken care to save nothing in lawyers, there were really no means of disregarding his wishes, except by relinquishing all claims under the will. And so, many years ago, the Mather Safe came to be opened to the public on the conditions already declared. At first, it was matter of surprise that so many persons appeared to claim the privilege of Farrel's singular legacy. Carefully enveloped packages had been consigned to various periods of oblivion by all conditions of men and women. These were numbered and registered in a volume kept for the purpose; they were severally addressed, perhaps to a specified descendant of some living person, perhaps to the future occupant of some professor's chair or metropolitan pulpit.

It was near the Mather Safe, as I have already said, that my favorite alcove opened. In the short winter afternoon, when the twilight thickened without the building, and the type began to blur within, I would lay aside my book and muse over wild rumors of secrets borne by this messenger between the generations. Journals and letters, it was said, were there concealed, which should change the current gossip of history, and explode many bubble-reputations that had glittered on the world. There were hints of deadly sins, committed by men high in Church and State, which their perpetrators lacked the courage to confess before their fellows, but which, in the bitterness of remorse, they had recorded in the Mather Safe, to blacken their fame to future times,--thus taking a ghastly satisfaction from the knowledge that they should not always appear as whited sepulchres before men. There was vague talk, also, of funds which had been deposited to found some professorship in the College, to furnish some instruction which the age was not advanced enough to accept. Then, too, there were intimations of endowments to establish scholarships for women, who,--so it was argued,--after the increasing enlightenment of a few score of years, would be admitted to every privilege of culture offered to men. In short, there was matter enough to send a curdling tingle through the blood, as this tough old ark, buffeting slowly through the years, entered its familiar night. If there was deficiency in the testimony which consigned any special wonder to its keeping, there was, doubtless, sufficient truth in common reports to justify the imagination in interpreting misty hieroglyphics of its own device.

During the latter part of a certain August--my family being established at the seaside--I determined to devote a long day to the College Library. The fact was, that a trifling domestic incident--no other than the smoking of a kitchen-chimney--had turned my attention to the conditions of atmospheric changes. Certain phenomena I had observed seemed inconsistent with the law assumed in popular text-books. Indeed, as it appeared to me, modifications of a received theory--which might be determined by a diligent comparison of existing authorities--would suggest a household economy of great practical importance. Certain facts, which must have been noted by all the great voyagers of the world, might give me data from which to establish the suspected conclusion. I accordingly repaired to the library at a very early hour, and labored through the day in collecting and committing to writing what had been observed by many eminent navigators upon the point in question. Four o'clock in the afternoon found me too tired to apply any process of analysis to the observations obtained. I therefore retired to my accustomed seat, took down almost the first book which came to hand, and resigned myself to the impressions of a favorite author. I had passed about an hour in a delicious state of dreamy tranquillity, sometimes reading, sometimes pausing to color the faded page with the brilliant hues of more modern thought, when my attention was attracted by a familiar voice proceeding from the neighborhood of the Mather Safe.

"The President and Treasurer were to have been here at five o'clock."

"I have heard nothing of it," said the Librarian. "I am sure that the President is out of town for the day."

"Strange! strange!" exclaimed the Reverend Mr. Clifton, in a very excited tone. "I wish to make a deposit of great importance in the Mather Safe. I had the assurance that the Safe should be opened at five this afternoon. Here, read the solemn promise upon which I have come from Foxden!"

The Librarian glanced at an open letter which Clifton held out to him, and said, in a quiet manner,--

"The President promises to meet you in the College Library on the afternoon of Thursday, the twenty-fourth instant; to-day is Wednesday, the twenty-third."

"Is it possible?" muttered the clergyman, with a look of startled despair. "Pardon my disturbance. I have been hardly myself for these last weeks. Yet I can wait."

I spoke to Mr. Clifton as he was about to leave the library. He blenched at hearing my voice, and strove to conceal the package beneath his arm.

"How do my good friends in Foxden?" said I, inviting him into my alcove. "Is it true that Dr. Dastick has presented his cabinet of curiosities to the town?"

"What are you reading?" said the clergyman, in a tone of curt authority very foreign to the mild persuasiveness of his usual professional accents.

I exhibited the title of the book: it was the "Meditations of Descartes."

"And do you follow those who vainly seek for truth through the inner world of man, not conforming themselves to the necessities of the outward world and the teachings of Revelation?"

I defended the usefulness of some acquaintance with the original and powerful thinker, whose apologies are certainly profuse enough to satisfy the most orthodox.

"Yes; I suppose you read Spinoza, Hegel, Fichte, the Atheism of D'Holbach, Utilitarianism Systematized by Auguste Comte! Did you ever go fishing in a dory when the wind was off shore?"

There was an alarm in the eye and manner of Mr. Clifton, a tremulous restlessness in his speech, which warned me to avoid discussion, and endeavor to soothe his agitation. It was only to the last interrogatory, therefore, that I made some light reply.

"The sea sparkles gayly," pursued the clergyman, in the manner of an extemporaneous preacher who strives to catch in a net of decorations some illustration which presents itself,--"the boat tosses on from wave to wave, for dories will sail before the wind. Soon we are miles from shore, and throw the anchor. What auspicious expansion of soul and body! How we slide up and down the backs of great billows, and cast our lines with ever-varying success! But the night comes, and with it the necessity of rowing back against wind and tide. Ah, then how long the lonely ocean-leagues! How distant the time when we may hope to stand confused and giddy upon solid earth! Some never see the land again, but are swept out into the storm and darkness, and are lost,--_lost_!"

"I presume I understand the significance of your similitude," I replied, a little annoyed at this inopportune indulgence of the pastoral privilege. "You would imply the dangerous tendency of a certain sort of philosophical speculation; and so far we doubtless agree. Yet I ought to say, that, in cases where personal investigation is possible, I would take neither popular clamor nor learned dogmatism as conclusive evidence against any writer's honesty and usefulness. With the vulgar, genius has always seemed a sort of madness; and should a man rise preeminent above the teachers of his generation, his wisdom would appear to them as foolishness."

A change came over the face of Clifton as I said these words. It was as if a mask had fallen. Perchance he had wished to appear to me in that character of instructor which he desired some competent person to assume to him. Now, the relaxed muscles and averted eye only asked the sympathy of an equal. He spoke with forced, and almost grating, utterance.

"Then you have used experience well enough to know that some minds may bear into the world a light, a knowledge too fine for general perception, too pure for even exceptional recognition."

"I fully believe it possible," I said. "Yonder old Safe, if rumor says true, holds many mystic signals which the past and present could address only to the future,--signs meaningless, no doubt, to you or me, but which the freemasonry of higher intelligence shall render plain in the time hereafter."

"And what if I had come," exclaimed Clifton, eagerly,--"what if I had come to add to those deposits which are not for this time, but which may be for other times? What blame to me, if I am here to do this? Should we common men, who find a life full of active duties presented to our acceptance,--should such as we, I say, receive this world as a pageant before which we must sit down and evolve a doctrine? The conceit of external education is at present too strong to acknowledge a divine element radiating from the depths of the soul, and finding in the mind only an awkward and imperfect instrument. Any extravagance is now tolerated, but an extravagance of spirituality; and we find altogether wanting the perception, that, rising from the gross symbols of language, can know the subtile and precious emotion which in a more advanced state of being those symbols might suggest."