Army Life in a Black Regiment

Yesterday afternoon we were steaming over a summer sea, the deck level as a parlor-floor, no land in sight, no sail, until at last appeared one light-house, said to be Cape Roma...

My personal forebodings proved to be correct, and so were the threats of the surgeons. In May, 1864, I went home invalided, was compelled to resign in October from the same caus...

If Sergeant Rivers was a natural king among my dusky soldiers, Corporal Robert Sutton was the natural prime-minister. If not in all respects the ablest, he was the wisest man in...

There was not much stirring in the Department of the South early in 1863, and the St. Mary's expedition had afforded a new sensation. Of course the few officers of colored troop...

One can hardly imagine a body of men more disconsolate than a regiment suddenly transferred from an adventurous life in the enemy's country to the quiet of a sheltered camp, on...

There was in our regiment a very young recruit, named Sam Roberts, of whom Trowbridge used to tell this story. Early in the war Trowbridge had been once sent to Amelia Island wi...

The war brought to some of us, besides its direct experiences, many a strange fulfilment of dreams of other days. For instance, the present writer had been a faithful student of...

In reading military history, one finds the main interest to lie, undoubtedly, in the great campaigns, where a man, a regiment, a brigade, is but a pawn in the game. But there is...

Yes, that was a pleasant life on picket, in the delicious early summer of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In the retrospect I seem to s...

We were in our winter camp on Port Royal Island. It was a lovely November morning, soft and spring-like; the mocking-birds were singing, and the cotton-fields still white with f...

The Edisto expedition cost me the health and strength of several years. I could say, long after, in the words of one of the men, "I'se been a sickly person, eber since de expedi...

Let me revert once more to my diary, for a specimen of the sharp changes and sudden disappointments that may come to troops in service. But for a case or two of varioloid in the...

These pages record some of the adventures of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first slave regiment mustered into the service of the United States during the late civil w...