From H. W.
March 5. C. came home at night with the news that the First South Carolina Volunteers started on an expedition117 to-day which Colonel Higginson considers of very great importance, which will have very great results, or from which they will probably never return. Also that drafting has begun in Beaufort by Hunter’s orders.
General Saxton has passed his word to the people here that they shall not be forced into the army—I don’t see what is to be the upshot of it—they will lose all confidence in us. Anywhere but here! Saxton himself gave Colonel Montgomery118 leave to draft in Florida and Key West, but he had no need to—more recruits offered than he could bring away with him. I don’t wish to find fault with my commanding general, but I have yet to be shown the first thing Hunter has done which I consider wise or fine. Saxton has had to go down more than once and persuade him not to execute his orders.
In the following letter the reference to Mrs. Wolcott and McClellan has to do with that visit to Boston of the deposed general which was made such a triumphal progress for him by the conservatives of the town. The reference to Hallowell, who had a commission in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, the first colored regiment raised by a state government, is interesting as further evidence of the prejudice against negro troops.
March 6. C. brought me last night a long letter from S. descriptive of Mrs. Wolcott’s party, McClellan, the fashions, and Hallowell’s feeling at the position in which he places himself in going into a negro regiment. I wish he could see Colonel Higginson and his, but a Northern black regiment will be a very different thing from a Southern one—the men will have the vices of civilization from which these are free. Colonel Higginson is an enthusiast, but I do not see that he exaggerates or states anything but facts.
Then follow specimens of the conversation of Robert and Rose, with which may be put here two others, really of later date.
“Miss Hayiut, that your home?” Robert asked me this morning, looking at some colored pictures of the Crystal Palace I found in a London News and nailed up in the entry yesterday! He’s bound to go North with Mass’ Charlie. If he expects to live in such a mansion I don’t wonder he wishes to.
Saturday, March 7. If you could have seen Rose’s astonishment this morning when she comprehended that the clock was not alive! I made her tell me what time it was, which she did successfully, and then, as she stood gazing at the minute-hand “move so fast,” I said, “Yes, it is going all the time—it never stops.” “No rest for eat?” she said with the utmost innocence; and when I told her it was not alive and did not need to eat, she was quite sure the pendulum must be if the hands were not.
[March 10.119] Some instructions about cleaning up led me to ask Rose if she liked dirt, to which she replied, like a true Yankee, with the question, “Miss Hay’t, you like um? You no like um, I no like um.” A little while after, she got talking about “Maussa” and Cockloft; when I asked what she would do if she should see Mr. Coffin come here, she said, “I run,” “dey bad.” Oh, no, not bad, I guess. “Miss Hay’t” (you have no idea how short it is, almost “Hat”), “you shum? [see ’em] Well, you do’no; I shum, I know.”
[Nov. 1.] “I say praise for you, ’cause I mind you,” said Rose to me in her affectionate way this morning. She tames slowly, as Mr. Soule and I thought when we came home from riding this morning and saw her waiting for us at the entrance of the path on the beach turning somersaults on the sand! Her hands would appear high in the air, when suddenly her heels would be in their place! Yesterday morning she said: “Miss Hayiut, you gwine let me go home to-day for wash?” Yes, Rose, if you are a good girl. “Yes, Ma’am, me gwine be good girl, my contans [conscience] say, ‘Rose, you be good girl, not make Miss Hayiut talk.’”
To return to H. W.’s letter of March 7:
We drove up to church and heard the text read for the first time! H. was not there, so we went there to dinner again, probably for the last time, as we found the places are really to be sold to-morrow. Mr. Philbrick hopes to be through with collecting the cotton in a fortnight, and then they will be able to come down here, as he can go to Beaufort once a week for a night or two until it is all ginned and shipped, and then they will go home.
The next letters return to the all-absorbing matter of the land-sales. The opening paragraph refers to them and the way they were being managed, as well as to the old question of negro character and negro labor.