when three of her best
slaves, each of whom had probably been worth a couple of
thousand dollars in _ante-bellum_ days, took their bundles
and marched off to the boat. We bade the lady farewell, and
pushed off amid the shouts and screams of a score of negro
women and children, and the tears and execrations of the
widow.

"To illustrate the unreasonable orders Gen. Birney was
sometimes in the habit of giving to officers engaged under
him on recruiting service, the writer well remembers being
placed by him, at Pungoteague, Va., in charge of some 200
recruits he had forcibly taken from an officer recruiting
under Col. Nelson's orders, and receiving from him (Gen.
Birney) the most positive orders under no circumstances to
allow Col. Nelson to get possession of them,--Col. Nelson's
steamer was hourly expected--and that I should be held
personally responsible that they were put on board his own
steamer, and this when I had neither men nor muskets to
enforce the order. Fortunately (for myself) Gen. Birney's
steamer arrived first and the men were safely put on board.
Some days later, Lieut. Brown, who was then in charge of the
same station, had a squad of recruits taken from him by Col.
Nelson, in retaliation.

"Many a hap-hazard journey was undertaken in search of
recruits and recruiting stations. On one occasion an officer
was ordered by Gen. Birney to take station at a town(?) not
many miles from Port Tobacco, on the Potomac. After two
days' careful search he discovered that the town he was in
search of had been a post-office twenty years before, but
then consisted of one house, uninhabited and uninhabitable,
with not another within the circuit of five miles."

When the Government decided to arm the negroes and ordered the
organization of a hundred regiments, it was with great difficulty the
equipment department met the requisitions. It necessitated a departure
from the accustomed uniform material for volunteers, and helped to
arouse the animosity of the white troops. Instead of the coarse material
issued at first, the Phalanx was clothed in a fine blue-black dress coat
for the infantry, and a superb dark blue jacket for the artillery and
cavalry, all neatly trimmed with brass buttons and white, red and yellow
cord, representing the arm of service; heavy sky blue pantaloo