sound which breaks his dream
Is the ever-moaning tide
Washing on his vessel's side.
Slow, slow! as we go,
Swing his coffin to and fro;
As of old the lusty billow
Swayed him on his heaving pillow:
So that he may fancy still,
Climbing up the watery hill,
Plunging in the watery vale,
With her wide-distended sail,
His good ship securely stands
Onward to the golden lands.
Slow, slow!--heave-a-ho!--
Lower him to the mould below;
With the well-known sailor ballad,
Lest he grow more cold and pallid
At the thought that Ocean's child,
From his mother's arms beguiled,
Must repose for countless years,
Reft of all her briny tears,
All the rights he owned by birth,
In the dusty lap of earth.
UP THE EDISTO.
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 a charm also in the more free
and adventurous life of partisan warfare, where, if the total sphere be
humbler, yet the individual has more relative importance, and the sense
of action is more personal and keen. This is the reason given by the
eccentric Revolutionary biographer, Weems, for writing the Life of
Washington first, and then that of Marion. And there were, certainly, in
the early adventures of the colored troops in the Department of the
South, some of the same elements of picturesqueness that belonged to
Marion's band, with the added feature that the blacks were fighting for
their personal liberties, of which Marion had helped to deprive them.
It is stated by Major-General Gillmore, in his "Siege of Charleston," as
one of the three points in his preliminary strategy, that an expedition
was sent up the Edisto River to destroy a bridge on the Charleston and
Savannah Railway. As one of the early raids of the colored troops, this
expedition may deserve narration, though it was, in a strategic point of
view, a disappointment. It has already been told, briefly and on the
whole with truth, by Greeley and others, but I will venture on a more
complete account.
The project dated back earlier than General Gillmore's siege, and had
originally no connection with that movement. It had been formed by
Captain Trowbridge and myself in camp, and was based on facts learned
from the men. General Saxton and Colon
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