ng them quickly.

[Illustration: OFF FOR THE WAR.

Negro men marching aboard a steamer to join their regiments at Hilton
Head, S. C.]

"With the subsequent history of our black troops the public
is already familiar. General Lorenzo Thomas, titular
Adjutant-General of our army, not being regarded as a very
efficient officer for that place, was permanently detailed
on various services; now exchanging prisoners, now
discussing points of military law, now organizing black
brigades down the Mississippi and elsewhere. In fact, the
main object seemed to be to keep this Gen. Thomas--who must
not be confounded with Gen. George H. Thomas, one of the
true heroes of our army,--away from the Adjutant-General's
office at Washington, in order that Brigadier-General E. W.
Townsend--only a Colonel until quite recently--might perform
all the laborious and crushing duties of Adjutant-General of
our army, while only signing himself and ranking as First
Assistant Adjutant-General. If there be an officer who has
done noble service in the late war while receiving no public
credit for the same,--no newspaper puffs nor public
ovation,--that man is Brigadier-General E. W. Townsend, who
should long since have been made a major-general, to rank
from the first day of the rebellion.

"And now let us only add, as practical proof that the
rebels, even in their most rabid state, were not insensible
to the force of proper "reasons," the following anecdote:
Some officers of one of the black regiments--Colonel
Higginson's, we believe--indiscreetly rode beyond our lines
around St. Augustine in pursuit of game, but whether
feathered or female this deponent sayeth not. Their guide
proved to be a spy, who had given notice of the intended
expedition to the enemy, and the whole party were soon
surprised and captured. The next we heard of them, they were
confined in the condemned cells of one of the Florida State
prisons, and were to be "tried"--i. e., sentenced and
executed--as 'having been engaged in inciting negro
insurrection.'

"We had some wealthy young slave-holders belonging to the
first families of South Carolina in the custody of
Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Hall--now Brigadier-General of this
city, who was our Provost Marshal; and it was on this basis
Ge