T. Bennett, of the One Hundred
and Second United States Colored Troops, who was assigned to the
command, never actually held it, being always in charge of a brigade.

The officers and men are scattered far and wide. One of our captains
was a member of the South Carolina Constitutional Convention, and is
now State Treasurer; three of our sergeants were in that Convention,
including Sergeant Prince Rivers; and he and Sergeant Henry Hayne
are still members of the State Legislature. Both in that State and hi
Florida the former members of the regiment are generally prospering, so
far as I can hear. The increased self-respect of army life fitted them
to do the duties of civil life. It is not in nature that the jealousy
of race should die out in this generation, but I trust they will not see
the fulfilment of Corporal Simon Cram's prediction. Simon was one of the
shrewdest old fellows in the regiment, and he said to me once, as he
was jogging out of Beaufort behind me, on the Shell Road, "I'se goin'
to leave de Souf, Cunnel, when de war is over. I'se made up my mind dat
dese yere Secesh will neber be cibilized in my time."

The only member of the regiment whom I have seen since leaving it is a
young man, Cyrus Wiggins, who was brought off from the main-land in a
dug-out, in broad day, before the very eyes of the rebel pickets, by
Captain James S. Rogers, of my regiment. It was one of the most daring
acts I ever saw, and as it happened under my own observation I was glad
when the Captain took home with him this "captive of his bow and spear"
to be educated under his eye in Massachusetts. Cyrus has done credit
to his friends, and will be satisfied with nothing short of a
college-training at Howard University. I have letters from the men, very
quaint in handwriting and spelling; but he is the only one whom I have
seen. Some time I hope to revisit those scenes, and shall feel, no
doubt, like a bewildered Rip Van Winkle who once wore uniform.

We who served with the black troops have this peculiar satisfaction,
that, whatever dignity or sacredness the memories of the war may have to
others, they have more to us. In that contest all the ordinary ties of
patriotism were the same, of course, to us as to the rest; they had no
motives which we had not, as they have now no memories which are not
also ours. But the peculiar privilege of associating with an outcast
race, of training it to defend its rights and to perform its duties,
thi