"Private Miles O'Reilly" was the nom
de plume of a talented literary gentleman of
the city of New York, who wrote much in
humorous prose and verse. His real name was
Charles G. Halpine. After an
honorable service in the war, rising to high
rank, he was elected Register of New York,
and died suddenly while in office, in 1808.
The following sketches from his pen,
published during the war, give an account of
matters connected with the recruiting and
organizing of negro troops in South
Carolina, and are quoted here as interesting
historical facts connected with the subject:
"Black troops are now an established success, and
hereafter—while the race can furnish enough
able-bodied males—the probability would seem
that one-half the permanent naval and
military forces of the United States will be
drawn from this material, under the guidance
and control of the white officers.
To-day there is much competition among the
field and staff officers of our white
volunteers—more especially in those
regiments about being disbanded—to obtain
commission of like or even lower grades in
the colored regiments of Uncle Sam.
General Casey's board of
examination cannot keep in session long
enough, nor dismiss incompetent aspirants
quick enough, to keep down the vast throngs
of veterans, with and without
shoulder-straps, who are now seeking various
grades of command in the colored brigades of
the Union. Over this result all
intelligent men will rejoice,—the privilege
of being either killed or wounded in battle,
or stricken down by the disease, toil and
privations incident to the life of a
marching soldier, not belonging to that
class of prerogative for the exclusive
enjoyment of which men of sense, and with
higher careers open to them, will long
contend. Looking back, however,
but a few years, to the organization of the
first regiment of black troops in the
departments of the South, what a change in
public opinion are we compelled to
recognize! In sober verity, war is
[Pg. 146]
not only the sternest, but the quickest, of
all teachers; and contrasting the Then and
Now of our negro regiments, as we propose to
do in this sketch, the contrast will
forcibly recall Galileo's obdurate assertion
that 'the world still moves.'
" Be it known, then, that the first regiment of black
troops raised in our recent war, was raised
in the Spring of 1862 by the commanding
general of the department of the South, of
his own motion, and without any direct
authority of law, order, or even sanction
from the President, the Secretary of War, or
our House of Congress. It was done by
General Hunter as ' a military
necessity ' under very peculiar
circumstances, to be detailed hereafter; and
although repudiated at first by the
Government as were so many other measures
originated in the same quarter, it was
finally adopted as the settled policy of the
country and of our military system; as have
likewise since been adopted, all the other
original measures for which these officers,
at the time of their first announcement, was
made to suffer both official rebuke and the
violently vituperative denunciation of more
than one-half the Northern press.
"In the Spring of 1862, General Hunter,
finding himself with lees than eleven
thousand men under his command, and charged
with the duty of holding the whole tortuous
and broken seacoast of Georgia, South
Carolina and Florida, had applied often, and
in vain, to the authorities at Washington
for reinforcements. All the troops
that could be gathered in the North were
less than sufficient for the continuous
drain of General McClellan's
great operations against the enemy's
capital; and the reiterated answer of the
War Department was: 'You must get
along as best you can. Not a man from
the North can be spared.'
"On the mainland of three States nominally forming the
Department of the South, the flag of the
Union had no permanent foothold, save at
Fernandiua, St. Augustine, and some few
unimportant points along the Florida coast.
It was on the Sea-islands of Georgia and
South Carolina that our troops were
stationed, and continually engaged in
fortifying — the enemy being everywhere
visible, and in force, across the narrow
creeks dividing us from the mainland; and in
various raids they came across to our
islands, and we drove them back to the
mainland, and up their creeks, with a few
gunboats to help us—being the order of the
day; yea, and yet oftener, of the night.
"No reinforcements to be had from the North; vast
fatigue duties in
throwing up earthworks imposed on our
insufficient garrison; the enemy
continually increasing both in insolence and
numbers; our only success
the capture of Fort Pulaski, sealing up of
Savannah; and this victory offset, if not.
fully counter-balanced, by many minor gains
of the enemy; this was about the condition
of affairs as seen from the headquarters
fronting Port Royal bay, when General
Hunter one fine morning, with
twirling glasses, puckered lips, and dilated
nostrils, (he had just received another '
don't-bother-us-for-reinforcements '
dispatch from Washington) announced his
intention of ' forming a negro regiment, and
compelling
[Pg. 147]
every
able-bodied black man in the department to
fight for the freedom which could not but be
the issue of our war.' This resolution
being taken, was immediately acted upon with
vigor, the General causing all the necessary
orders to be issued, and taking upon
himself, as his private burden, the
responsibility for all the irregular issues
of arms, clothing, equipments, and rations
involved in collecting and organizing the
first experimental negro regiment. The
men he intended to pay, at first, by placing
them as laborers on the pay-roll of the
Chief Quartermaster; but it was his hope
that the obvious necessity and wisdom of the
measure he had thus presumed to adopt
without authority, would secure for it the
immediate approval of the higher
authorities, and the necessary orders to
cover the required pay and supply-issue of
the force he had in contemplation. If his
course should be endorsed
by the War Department, well and good; if it
were not so indorsed, why
he had enough property of his own to pay
back to the Government all he was
irregularly expending in this experiment.
"But now, on the very threshhold of this novel
enterprise, came the first—and it was not a
trivial—difficulty. Where could experienced
officers be found for such an organization ?
' What ! command niggers? ' was the reply—if
possible more amazed than scornful—of nearly
every competent young lieutenant or captain
of volunteers to whom the suggestion of
commanding this class of troops was made. '
Never mind,' said Hunter, when this
trouble was brought to his notice; 'the
fools or bigots who refuse are enough
punished by their refusal. Before two years
they will be competing eagerly for the
commission they now reject.
'Straightly there was issued a circular to
all commanding officers in the department,
directing them to announce to the
non-commissioned officers and men of their
respective commands that commissions in the
'South Carolina Regiment of Colored
Infantry,' would be given to all deserving
and reputable sergeants, corporals; and men
who would appear at department headquarters,
and prove able to pass an examination in the
manual and tactics before a Band of
Examiners, which was organized in a general
order of current date. Capt.
Arthur M. Kenzie, of Chicago,
aid-de-camp,—now of Hancock's Veterans
Reserve Corps—was detailed as Colonel of the
regiment, giving place, subsequently, in
consequence of injured health, to the
present Brig.-Gen. James D. Fessenden,
then a captain in the Berdan Sharpshooters,
though detailed as acting aid-de-camp on
Gen. Hunter's staff. Capt.
Kenzie, we may add, was Gen.
Hunter's nephew, and his appointment
as Colonel was made partly to prove —so
violent was then the prejudice against negro
troops—that the Commanding General asks
nothing of them which he was not willing
that one of his own flesh and blood should
be engaged in.
"The work was now fairly in progress, but the barriers
of prejudice were not to be lightly
overthrown. Non-commissioned officers and
men of the right stamp, and able to pass the
examination requisite, were scarce articles.
Ten had the hardihood or moral courage to
face the
[Pg. 148]
screaming, riotous ridicule of their late
associates in the white regiments. We
remember one very striking instance in
point, which we shall give as a sample of
the whole.
"Our friend Mr. Charles F. Briggs, of this city,
so well known in literary circles, had a
nephew enlisted in that excellent regiment
the 48th New York, then garrisoning Fort
Pulaski and the works of Tybee Island.
This youngster had raised himself by
gallantry and good conduct to be a
non-commissioned officer; and Mr. Briggs
was anxious that he should be commissioned,
according to his capabilities, in the
colored troops then being raised. The
lad was sent for, passed his examination
with credit, and was immediately offered a
first lieutenancy, with the promise of being
made captain when his company should be
filled up to the required standard, -
probably within ten days.
"The inchoate first-lieutenant was in ecstasies; a
gentleman by birth and education, he longed
for the shoulder-straps. He appeared
joyously grateful; and only wanted leave to
run up to Fort Pulaski for the purpose of
collecting his traps, taking leave of his
former comrades, and procuring his
discharge-papers from Col. Barton.
Two days after that came a note to the
department headquarters respectfully
declining the commission! He had been
laughed and jeered out of accepting a
captaincy by his comrades; and this - though
we remember it more accurately from our
correspondence with Mr. Briggs - was
but one of many scores of precisely similar
cases.
"At length, however, officers were found; the ranks
were filled; the men learned with uncommon
quickness, having the imitativeness of so
many monkeys apparently, and such excellent
ears for music that all evolutions seemed to
come to them by nature. At once,
despite all hostile influence, the negro
regiment became one of the lions of the
South; and strangers visiting the
department, crowded out eagerly to see its
evening parades and Sunday-morning
inspection. By a strange coincidence,
its camp was pitched on the lawn and around
the mansion of Gen. Drayton, who
commanded the rebel works guarding Hilton
Head, Port Royal and Beaufort, when the same
were first captured by the joint naval and
military operations under Admiral DuPont
and General Timothy W. Sherman, -
General Drayton's brother, Captain
Drayton, of our navy, having command of
one of the bet vessels in the attacking
squadron; as he subsequently took aprt in
the first iron-clad attack on Fort Sumpter.
"Meantime, however, the War Department gave no sign,
and the oracles of the Adjutant-General's
office were dumb as the statue of the Sphynx.
Reports of the organization of the First
South Carolina infantry were duly forwarded
to army headquarters; but evoked no comment,
either of approval or rebuke. Letters
detailing what had been done, and the reason
for doing it; asking instructions, and to
have commissions duly issued to the officers
selected; appeals that the department
paymaster should be instructed to pay these
negro troops like other soldiers; demands
that the Government should either shoulder
the respon-
[Pg. 149]
FORTIFICATIONS AT HILTON HEAD.
Genl'. Hunter's black regiment in the
distance.
[Pg. 150] - BLANK
[Pg. 151]
sibility of sustaining the organization, or
give such orders as would absolve Gen.
Hunter from the responsibility of
backing out from an experiment which he
believed to be essential to the salvation of
the country, - all these appeals to
Washington proved in vain; for the oracles
still remained profoundly silent, probably
waiting to see how public opinion and the
politicians would receive this daring
innovation.
"At length one evening a special dispatch steamer
plowed her way over the bar, and a
perspiring messenger delivered into Gen.
Hunter's hands a special despatch from
the War Department, 'requiring immediate
answer.' The General was just about
mounting his horse for his evening ride
along the picket line, when this portentous
missive wa brought under his notice.
Hastily opening it, he first looked grave,
then began to smile, and finally burst into
peals of irrepressible laughter, such as
were rarely heard from 'Black
David,' his old army name. Never
was the General seen, before or since, in
such good spirits; he literally was unable
to speak from constant interruption of
laughter; and all his Adjutant-General could
gather from him was: 'That he would
not part with the document in his hand for
fifty thousand dollars.'
"At length he passed over the dispatch to his Chief of
Staff, who on reading it, and re-reading it,
could find in its texts but little apparent
cause for merriment. It was a grave
demand from the War Department for
information in regard to our negro regiment
- the demand being based on a certain
resolution introduced by the Hon. Mr.
Wickliffe, of Kentucky, asking for
specific information on the point, in a tone
clearly not friendly. These
resolutions had been adopted by Congress;
and as Hunter was without authority
for any of his actions in this case, it
seemed to his then not cheerful
Adjutant-General that the documents in his
hands were the reverse of hilarious.
"Still Hunter was in extravagant spirits as he
rode along, his laughter startling the
squirrels in the dense pine woods, and every
attempt that he made to explain himself
being again and again interrupted by renewed
peals of inextinguishable mirth. 'The
fools!' he at length managed to say; 'that
old fool has just given me the very chance I
was growing sick for! The War
Department has refused to notice my black
regiment; but now, in reply to this
resolution, I can lay the matter before the
country, and force the authorities either to
adopt my negroes or disband them.' He
then rapidly sketched out the kind of reply
he wished to have prepared; and, with the
first ten words of his explanation, the full
force of the cause he had for laughter
became apparent. Never did a General
and his Chief-of-Staff, in a more unseemly
state of cachinnation, ride along a
picket-line. At every new phase of the
subject it presented new features of the
ludicrous; and though the reply at this late
date may have lost much of the drollery
which then it wore, it is a serio-comic
document of as much vital importance in the
moral history of our late contest as any
that can be found in the archives under the
care of Gen. E. D. Townsend. It
was received late Sunday evening, and was
answered very late that night, in order to
be in time for the steamer.
[Pg. 152]
Arago, which sailed at daylight next
morning, - the dispatch-steamer which
brought the request 'for immediate
information' having sustained some injuries
which prevented an immediate return.
It was written after midnight, we may add,
in a tornado of thunder and tempest such as
has rarely been known even on that
tornado-stricken coast; but loud as were the
peals and vivid the flashes of heaven's
artillery, there were at least two persons
within the lines on Hilton Head who were
laughing far too noisily themselves to pay
any heed to external clamors. The
reply thus concocted, and sent, from an
uncorrected manuscript copy now in our
possession, ran as follows:
"HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH.
Hilton Head, S. C., June, 1862.
"To the HON. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of
War, Washington, D. C.
"SIR: - I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of
a communication from the Adjutant-General of
the Army, dated June 13, 1862, requesting me
to furnish you with the information
necessary to answer certain Resolutions
introduced in the House of Representatives
June 9, 1862, on motion of the Hon. Mr.
Wickliffe, of Kentucky; their substance
being to enquire:
"1st - Whether I had organized, or was organizing, a
regiment of 'fugitive slaves' in this
department.
"2d - Whether say authority had been given to me from
the War Department for such an organization;
and
"3rd - Whether I had been furnished, by order of the
War Department, with clothing, uniforms,
arms, equipments, and so forth, for such a
force?
"Only having received the letter at a late hour this
evening, I urge forward my answer in time
for the steamer sailing to-morrow morning, -
this haste preventing me from entering, a
minutely as I could wish, upon many points
of detail, such as the paramount importance
of the subject would seem to call for.
But, in view of the near termination of the
present session of Congress, and the
wide-spread interest which must have been
awakened by Mr. Wickliffe's
resolutions, I prefer sending even this
imperfect answers to waiting the period
necessary for the collection of fuller and
more comprehensive data.
"To the first question, therefore, I reply: That
no regiment of 'fugitive slaves' has been,
or is being, organized in this department.
There is, however, a fine regiment of loyal
persons whose late masters are fugitive
rebels - men who everywhere fly before the
appearance of the national flag, leaving
their loyal and unhappy servants behind
them, to shift, as best they can, for
themselves. So far, indeed, are the
loyal persons composing the regiment from
seeking to evade the presence of their late
owners, that they are now, one and all,
endeavoring with commendable zeal to acquire
the drill and discipline requisite to place
them in a position to go in full and
effective pursuit of their fugacious and
traitorous proprietors.
"To the second question, I have the honor to answer
that the instructions given to Brig.-Gen.
T. W. Sherman by the Hon. Simon
Cameron, late Secretary of War, and
turned over to me, by succession, for my
guidance, do distinctly authorize me to
employ all loyal persons offering their
service in defence of the Union, and for the
suppression of this rebellion,' in any
manner I may see fit, or that circumstances
may call for. There is now restriction
as to the character or color of the persons
to be employed, or the nature of the
employment - whether civil or military - in
which their services may be used. I
conclude, therefore, that I have been
authorized to enlist 'fugitive slaves' as
soldiers, could say such fugitives be found
in this department. No such
characters, however, have yet appeared
within view of our most advanced pickets, -
the loyal negroes everywhere remaining on
their plantations to welcome us, aid us, and
supply us with food, labor and information.
It is the masters who have in every instance
been the 'fugitives,' running away from
loyal slaves as well as loyal soldiers; and
these, as yet, we have only partially been
able to see - chiefly their heads over
ramparts, or
[Pg. 153]
dodging behind trees, rifles in hand, in the
extreme distance. In the absence of
any 'fugitive master law,' the deserted
slaves would be wholly without remedy had
not the crime of treason given them right to
pursue, capture and bring those persons of
whose benignant protection they have been
thus suddenly and cruelly bereft.
"To the third interrogatory, it is my painful duty to
reply that I have never received any
specific authority for issue of clothing,
uniforms, arms, equipments and so
[Pg. 154]
scream and laugh; until finally, the
merriment reached its climax on a motion
made by some member Schuyler
Colfax, if we remember rightly that 'as
the document appeared to please the
honorable gentleman from Kentucky so much,
and as he had not heard the whole of it the
Clerk be now requested to read the whole
again' a motion which was instantaneously
carried amid such an uproar of universal
merriment and applause as the frescoed walls
of the chamber have seldom heard, either
before or since. It was the great joke
of the day, and coming at a moment of
universal gloom in the public mind, was
seized upon by the whole loyal press of the
country as a kind of politico-military
champaign cocktail.
"This set that question at rest forever; and not long
after, the proper authorities saw fit to
authorize the employment of 'fifty thousand
able-bodied blacks for labor in the
Quartermaster's Department,' and the arming
and drilling as soldiers of five thousand of
these, but for the sole purpose of
'protecting the women and children of their
fellow laborers who might be absent from
home in the public service.'
"Here we have another instance of the reluctance with
which the National Government took up this
idea of employing negroes as soldiers; a
resolution, we may add, to which they were
only finally compelled by General
Hunter's disbandment of his original
regiment, and the storm of public
indignation which followed that act.
"Nothing could have been happier in its effect upon the
public mind than Gen. Hunter's
reply to Mr. Wickliffe, of
Kentucky, given in our last. It
produced a general broad grin throughout the
country, and the advocate who can set his
jury laughing rarely loses his cause.
It also strengthened the spinal column of
the Government in a very marked degree
although not yet up to the point of fully
endorsing and accepting this daring
experiment.
"Meantime the civil authorities of course got wind of
what was going on, Mr. Henry J. Windsor,
special correspondent of the New York Times,
in the Department of the south, having
devoted several very graphic and
widely-copied letters to a picture of that
new thing under the sun, ' Hunter's negro
regiment.'
" Of course the chivalry of the rebellion were incensed
beyond measure at this last Yankee outrage
upon Southern rights. Their papers
teemed with vindictive articles against the
commanding general who had dared to initiate
such a novelty. The Savannah
Republican, in particular, denouncing Hunter
as 'the cool-blooded abolition miscreant
who, from his headquarters at Hilton Head,
is engaged in executing the bloody and
savage behest of the imperial gorilla who,
from his throne of human bones at
Washington, rules, reigns and riots over the
destinies of the brutish and degraded
North.'
" Mere newspaper abuse, however, by no means gave
content to the outraged feeling of the
chivalry. They therefore sent a formal
demand
[Pg. 155]
Building Roads
[Pg. 156] - BLANK
[Pg. 157]
to our Government for information as to
whether Gen. Hunter, in
organizing his regiment of emancipated
slaves, had acted under the authority of our
War Department, or whether the villany was
of his own conception. If he had acted
under orders, why then terrible measures of
fierce retaliation against the whole Yankee
nation were to be adopted; but if, per
contra, the iniquity were of his own motion
and without the sanction of our Government,
then the foreshadowed retribution should be
made to fall only on Hunter and his
officers.
"To this demand, with its alternative of threats,
President Lincoln was in no mood
to make any definitive reply. In fact no
reply at all was sent, for, as yet, the most
far-seeing political augurs could not
determine whether the bird seen in the sky
of the Southern Department would prove an
eagle or a buzzard. Public opinion was
not formed upon the subject, though rapidly
forming. There were millions who
agreed with Hunter in believing that
'that the black man should be made to fight
for the freedom which could not but be the
issue of our war;' and then they were
outraged at the prospect of allowing black
men to be killed or maimed in company with
our nobler whites.
"Failing to obtain any reply therefor, from the
authorities at Washington, the Richmond
people determined to pour out all their
vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of
this last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith
there was issued from the rebel War
Department a General Order number 60, we
believe, of the series of 1862 reciting that
' as the government of the U. S. had refused
to answer whether it authorized the raising
of a black regiment by Gen. Hunter
or not' said General, his staff, and all
officers under his command who had directly
or indirectly participated in the unclean
thing, should hereafter be outlaws not
covered by the laws of war; but to be
executed as felons for the crimes of
'inciting negro insurrections wherever
caught.'
"This order reached the ears of the parties mainly
interested just as Gen. Hunter
was called to Washington, ostensibly for
consultation on public business; but really
on the motion of certain prominent
speculators in marine transportation, with
those 'big things,' in Port Royal harbor,
and they were enormous with which the
General had seen fit to interfere.
These frauds, however, will form a very
fruitful and pregnant theme for some future
chapters. At present our business is
with the slow but certain growth in the
public mind of this idea of allowing some
black men to be killed in the late war, and
not continuing to arrogate death and
mutilation by projectiles and bayonets as an
exclusive privilege for our own beloved
white race.
"No sooner had Hunter been relieved from this
special duty at Washington, than he was
ordered back to the South, our Government
still taking no notice of the order of
outlawry against him issued by the rebel
Secretary of War. He and his officers
were thus sent back to engage, with
extremely insufficient forces, in an
enterprise of no common difficulty, and with
an agreeable sentence of sus. per col.,
if captured, hanging over their devoted
heads!
[Pg. 158]
"Why not suggest to Mr. Stanton, General,
that he should either demand the special
revocation of that order, or announce to the
rebel War Department that our Government has
adopted your negro-regiment policy as its
own - which would be the same thing.
"It was partly on this hint that Hunter-wrote
the following letter to Jefferson
Davis, - a letter subsequently
suppressed and never sent, owing to
influences which the writer of this article
does not feel himself as yet at liberty to
reveal, - further than to say that
Mr. Stanton knew nothing of the
matter. Davis and Hunter,
we may add, had been very old and intimate
friends, until divided, some years previous
to our late war, by differences on the
slavery question. Davis had for
many years been adjutant of the 1st U. S.
Dragoons, of which Hunter had been
Captain Commanding; and a relationship of
very close friendship had existed between
their respective families. It was this
thorough knowledge of his man, perhaps,
which gave peculiar bitterness to
Hunter's pen; and the letter is
otherwise remarkable as a prophecy, or
preordainment of that precise policy which
Pres't. Johnson has so
frequently announced, and reiterated since
Mr. Lincoln's death. It ran
- with some few omissions, no longer
pertinent or of public interest - as
follows:
"TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, TITULAR PRESIDENT
OF THE SO-CALLED CONFEDERATE STATES.
"
SIR:- While recently in command of the
Department of the South, in accordance with
the laws of the war and the dictates of
common sense, I organized and caused to be
drilled, armed and equipped, a regiment of
enfranchised bondsmen, known as the 1st
South Carolina Volunteers.
"For this action, as I have ascertained, the pretended
government of which you are the chief
officer, has issued against me and all of my
officers who were engaged in organizing the
regiment in question, a General Order of
Outlawry, which announces that, if captured,
we shall not even be allowed the usual
miserable treatment extended to such
captives as fall into your hands; but that
we are to be regarded as felons, and to
receive the death by hanging due to such,
irrespective of the laws of war.
"Mr.
Davis, we have been acquainted
intimately in the past. We have
campaigned together, and our social
relations have been such as to make each
understand the other thoroughly. That
you mean, if it be ever in your power, to
execute the full rigor of your threats, I am
well assured; and you will believe my
assertion, that I thank you for having
raised in connection with me and my acts,
this sharp and decisive issue. I shall
proudly accept, if such be the chance of
war, the martyrdom you menace; and hereby
give you notice that unless your General
Order against me and my officers be formally
revoked, within thirty days from the date of
the transmission of this letter, sent under
a flag of truce, I shall take your action in
the matter as finale; and will reciprocate
it by hanging every rebel officer who now
is, or may hereafter be taken, prisoner by
the troops of the command to which I am
about returning.
"Believe me
that I rejoice at the aspect now being given
to the war by the course you have adopted.
In my judgment, if the undoubted felony of
treason had been treated from the outset as
it deserves to be - as the sum of all
felonies and crimes - this rebellion would
never have attained its present menacing
proportions. The war you and your
fellow conspirators have been waging against
the United States must be regarded either as
a war of justifiable defence, carried on for
the integrity of the boundaries of a
sovereign Confederation of States against
foreign aggression, or as the most wicked,
enormous, and deliberately planned
conspiracy against human liberty and for the
triumph of treason and slavery, of which the
records of the world's history contain any
note.
"If our Government should adopt the first view of the
case, you and your fellow
[Pg. 159]
rebels may justly claim to be considered a
most unjustly treated body of disinterested
patriots, although, perhaps, a little
mistaken in your connivance with the thefts
by which your agent, John B. Floyd,
succeeded in arming the South and partially
disarming the North as a preparative to the
commencement of the struggle.
"But if on the other hand - as is the theory of our
Government - the war you have levied against
the U. S. be a rebellion the most causeless,
crafty and bloody ever known, - a conspiracy
having the rule-or-ruin policy for its
basis; the plunder of the black race and the
reopening of the African slave trade for its
object, the continued and further
degredation of ninety per cent, of the white
population of the South in favor of a slave
driving ten per cent, aristocracy, and the
exclusion of all foreign-born immigrants
from participation in the generous and equal
hospitality foreshadowed to them in the
Declaration of Independence, - if
this, as I believe, be a fair statement of
the origin and motives of the rebellion of
which you are the titular head, then it
would have been better had our Government
adhered to the constitutional view of
treason from the start, and hung every man
taken in arms against the U. S. from the
first butchery in the streets of Baltimore,
down to the last resultless battle fought in
the vicinity of Sharpsburg, If
treason, in other words, be any crime, it is
the essence of all crimes; a vast machinery
of guilt, multiplying assassinations into
wholesale slaughter, and organizing plunder
as the basis for supporting a system of
National Brigandage. Your action, and
that of those with whom you are in league,
has its best comment in the sympathy
extended to your cause by the despots and
aristocracies of Europe. You have
succeeded in throwing back civilization for
many years; and have made of the country
that was the freest, happiest, proudest,
richest, and most progressive but two short
years ago, a vast temple of mourning, doubt,
anxiety and privation- our manufactories of
all but war material nearly paralyzed; the
inventive spirit which was forever
developing new resources destroyed, and our
flag, that carried respect everywhere, now
mocked by enemies who think its glory
tarnished, and that its power is soon to
become a mere tradition of the past.
"For all these results, Mr. Davis, and
for the three hundred thousand lives already
sacrificed on both sides in the war - some
pouring out their blood on the battle-field,
and others fever stricken and wasting away
to death in overcrowded hospitals - you and
the fellow miscreants who have been your
associates in this conspiracy are
responsible. Of you and them it may,
with truth be said, that if all the innocent
blood which you have spilled could be
collected in one pool, the whole government
of your Confederacy might swim in it.
"I am aware that this is not the language in which the
prevailing etiquette of our army is in the
habit of considering your conspiracy.
It has come to pass through what
instrumentalities you are best able to
decide that the greatest and worst crime
ever attempted against the human family, has
been treated in certain quarters as though
it were a mere error of judgment on the part
of some gifted friend; a thing to be
regretted, of course, as causing more or
less disturbance to the relation of amity
and esteem heretofore existing between those
charged with the repression of such
eccentricities and the eccentric actors; in
fact, as a slight political miscalculation
or peccadillo, rather than as an outrage
involving the desolation of a continent, and
demanding the promptest and severest
retribution within power of human law.
" For myself, I have never been able to take this view
of the matter. During a lifetime of
active service, I have seen the seeds of
this conspiracy planted in the rank soil of
slavery, and the up as-growth watered by
just such tricklings of a courtesy alike
false to justice, expediency, and our
eternal future. Had we at an earlier
day commenced to call things by their right
names, and to look at the hideous features
of slavery with our ordinary eyesight and
common sense, instead of through the
rose-colored glasses of supposed political
expediency, there would be three hundred
thousand more men alive to-day on American
soil; and our country would never for a
moment have forfeited her proud position as
the highest exampler of the blessings -
morals, intellectual and material - to be
derived from a free form of government.
"Whether your intention of hanging me and those of my
staff and other officers who were engaged in
organizing the 1st S. C. Volunteers, in case
we are taken prisoners in battle, will be
likely to benefit your cause or not, is a
matter mainly for your
[Pg. 160]
own consideration. For us , our
profession makes the sacrifice of life a
contingency ever present and always to be
accepted; and although such a form of death
as your order proposes, is not that to the
contemplating of which soldiers have trained
themselves, I feel well assured, both for
myself and those included in my sentence,
that we could die in no manner more damaging
to your abominable rebellion and the
abominable institution which is its origin.
"The South has already tried one hanging experiment,
but not with a success one would think
- to encourage its repetition. John
Brown, who was well known to me in
Kansas, and who will be known in
appreciative history through centuries which
will only recall your name to load it with
curses, once entered Virginia with seventeen
men and an idea. The terror caused by
the presence of his idea, and the dauntless
courage which prompted the assertion of his
faith, against all odds, I need not now
recall. The history is too familiar
and too painful. 'Old 'Ossawatomie '
was caught and hung; his seventeen men were
killed, captured or dispersed, and several
of them shared his fate. Portions of
his skin were tanned, I am told, and
circulated as relics dear to the barbarity
of the slave-holding heart. But more
than a million of armed white men, Mr.
Davis, are to-day marching South, in
practical acknowledgement that they regard
the hanging of three years ago as the murder
of a martyr; and as they march to a battle
which has the emancipation of all slaves as
one of its most glorious results, his name
is on their lips; to the music of his memory
their marching feet keep time; and as they
sling knapsacks each one becomes aware that
he is an armed apostle of the faith preached
by him,
" ' Who
has gone to be a soldier
In the army of the Lord I'
"I am content, if such be the will of
Providence to ascend the scaffold made
sacred by the blood of this martyr; and I
rejoice at every prospect of making our
struggle more earnest and inexorable on both
sides; for the sharper the conflict the
sooner ended; the more vigorous and
remorseless the strife, the less blood must
be shed in it eventually.
"In conclusion, let me assure you, that I rejoice with
my whole heart that your order in my case,
and that of my officers, if unrevoked, will
untie our hands for the future; and that we
shall be able to treat rebellion as it
deserves, and give to the felony of treason
a felon's death.
"
Very obediently yours,
DAVID HUNTER, Maj.-Gen."
"Not long after General Hunter's
return to the Department of the South, the
first step towards organizing and
recognizing negro troops was taken by our
Government, in a letter of instructions
directing Brigadier-General Rufus
Saxton - then Military Governor of South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida, within the
limits of Gen. Hunter's
command - to forthwith raise and organize
fifty thousand able-bodied blacks, for
service as laborers in the quartermaster's
department; of whom five thousand -
only five thousand, mark you - might
be armed and drilled as soldiers for the
purpose of 'protecting the women and
children of their fellow-laborers who might
be absent from home in the public service.'
"Here was authority given to Gen. Saxton,
over Hunter's head, to pursue some
steps farther the experiment which Hunter
- soon followed by General Phelps,
also included in the rebel order of
'outlawry' had been the first to initiate.
The rebel order still remained in full
force, and with no protest against it on the
part, of our Government; nor to our
knowledge, was any demand from Washington
ever made for its revocation during the
existence of the Confederacy. If
Hunter, therefore, or any of his
officers, had been captured in any of the
campaigns of the past two and a half years,
they had the pleasant knowledge for their
comfort that any rebel officers into whose
hands they might fall, was
[Pg. 161]
[Pg. 162]
- BLANK
[Pg. 163]
strictly enjoined to not ' shoot them on the
spot,' as was the order of General
Dix, but to hang them on the first tree
; and hang them quickly.
"With the subsequent history of our black troops the
public is already familiar. General
Lorenzo Thomas, titular
Adjutant-General of our army, not being
regarded as a very efficient officer for
that place, was permanently detailed on
various services; now exchanging prisoners,
now discussing points of military law, now
organizing black brigades down the
Mississippi and elsewhere. In fact,
the main object seemed to be to keep this
Gen. Thomas - who must not be
confounded with Gen. George H.
Thomas, one of the true heroes of our
army, - away from the Adjutant-General's
office at Washington, in order that
Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend only
a Colonel until quite recently - might
perform all the laborious and crushing
duties of Adjutant-General of our army,
while only signing himself and ranking as
First Assistant Adjutant-General. If
there be an officer who has done noble
service in the late war while receiving no
public credit for the same, no newspaper
puffs nor public ovation, - that man is
Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend, who
should long since have been made a
major-general, to rank from the first day of
the rebellion.
"And now let us only add, as practical proof that the
rebels, even in their most rabid state, were
not insensible to the force of proper
"reasons," the following anecdote: Some
officers of one our black regiments -
Colonel Higginson's, we believe -
indiscreetly rode beyond our lines around
St. Augustine in pursuit of game, but
whether feathered or female this deponent
sayeth not. Their guide proved to be a
spy, who had given notice of the intended
expedition to the enemy, and the whole party
were soon surprised and captured. The
next we heard of them, they were confined in
the condemned cells of one of the Florida
State prisons, and were to be "tried" - i.
e., sentenced and executed - as 'having been
engaged in inciting negro insurrection.'
"We had some wealthy young slave-holders belonging to
the first families of South Carolina in the
custody of Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Hall
now Brigadier-General of this city, who was
our Provost Marshal; and it was on this
basis Gen. Hunter resolved to
operate. 'Release my officers of black
troops from your condemned cells at once,
and notify me of the fact. Until so
notified, your first family prisoners in my
hands' the names then given - 'will receive
precisely similar treatment. For each
of my officers hung, I will hang three of my
prisoners who are slave-holders.' This
dose operated with instantaneous effect, and
the next letter received from our captured
officers set forth that they were at large
on parole, and treated as well as they could
wish to be in that miserable country.
"We cannot better conclude this sketch, perhaps, than
by giving the brief but pregnant verses in
which our ex-orderly, Private
Miles O'Reilly, late of the Old
Tenth Army Corps, gave his opinion on this
subject. They were first published in
connection with the banquet given in New
York by Gen. T. F. Meagher and the
officers of the Irish Brigade, to the
[Pg. 164]
returned veterans of that organization on
the 13th of Jan. 1864, at Irving Hall. Of
this song it may, perhaps, be said, in
verity and without vanity, that, as Gen.
Hunter's letter to Mr.
Wickliffe had settled the negro
soldiers' controversy in its official and
Congressional form, so did the publication
and immediate popular adoption of these
verses conclude all argument upon this
matter in the mind of the general public.
Its common sense, with a dash of drollery,
at once won over the Irish, who had been the
bitterest opponents of the measure, to
become its friends; and from that hour to
this, the attacks upon the experiment of our
negro soldiery have been so few and far
between that, indeed, they may be said to
have ceased altogether. It ran as
follows, and appeared in the Herald the
morning after the banquet as a portion of
the report of the speeches and festivities:
"SAMBO'S EIGHT TO
BE KIL'T.
(Air-The Low-Backed Chair.)
Some say it is a burnin' shame
To make the naygurs fight,
An' that the thrade o' being kilt
Belongs but to the white;
But as for me, upon me sowl,
So liberal are we here,
I'll let Sambo be murthered in place
o' meself
On every day in the year.
On every day in the year, boys,
An' every hour in the day,
The right to be kil't I'll divide
wid him,
An' divil a word I'll say.
In battle's wild commotion
I shouldn't at all object,
If Sambo's body should stop a ball
That was comin' for me direct;
An' the prod of a Southern bagnet,
So liberal are we here,
I'll resign and let Sambo take it,
On every day in the year.
On everv day in the year boys,
An' wid none o' your nasty pride,
All right in a Southern bagnet prod
Wid Sambo I'll divide.
The men who object to Sambo
Should take his place and fight;
An' it's betther to have a naygur's
hue
Than a liver that's wake an' white;
Though Sambo's black as the ace o'
spades
His finger a thrigger can pull,
An' his eye runs sthraight on the
barrel sight
From under its thatch o' wool.
So hear me all, boys, darlins!
Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff,
The right to be kilt I'll divide wid
him,
An' give him the largest half! |
"In
regard to Hunter's reply to Mr.
Wickliffe, we shall only add this
anecdote, told us one day by that brilliant
gentleman and scholar, the Hon "Sunset"
Cox, of Ohio (now of New York):
'I tell you, that letter
[Page 165]
from Hunter spoiled the prettiest
speech I had ever thought of making. I
had been delighted with Wicklifle's motion,
and thought the reply to it would furnish us
first-rate Democrat's thunder for the next
election. I made up my mind to sail in
against Hunter's answer no matter
what it was the moment it came; and to be
even more humorously successful in its
delivery and reception than I was in my
speech against War Horse Gurley, of Ohio,
which you have just been complimenting.
Well, you see, man proposes, but providence
orders otherwise. When the Clerk
announced the receipt of the answer, and
that he was about to read it, I caught the
Speaker's eye and was booked for the first
speech against your negro experiment.
The first sentence, being formal and
official, was very well; but at the second
the House began to grin, and at the third,
not a man on the floor except Father
Wickliffe, of Kentucky, perhaps who
was not convulsed with laughter. Even
my own risibles I found to be affected; and
before the document was concluded, I
motioned the Speaker that he might give the
floor to whom he pleased, as my desire to
distinguish myself in that particular tilt
was over.'"
|