olonel T.W. Higginson's colored regiment,
known as the First Regiment of South-Carolina Volunteers. Major-General
Hunter's first regiment was mainly made up of conscripts, drafted May
12th, 1862, and disbanded August 11th, three months afterwards, there
being no funds wherewith to pay them, and the discharged men going home
to find the cotton and corn they had planted overgrown with weeds. On
the 10th of October, General Saxton, being provided with competent
authority to raise five thousand colored troops, began to recruit a
regiment. His authority from the War Department bore date August 25th,
and the order conferring it states the object to be "to guard the
plantations, and protect the inhabitants from captivity and murder."
This was the first clear authority ever given by the Government to raise
a negro regiment in this war. There were, indeed, some ambiguous words
in the instructions of Secretary Cameron to General Sherman, when the
original expedition went to Port Royal, authorizing him to organize the
negroes into companies and squads for such services as they might be
fitted for, but this not to mean a general arming for military service.
Secretary Stanton, though furnishing muskets and red trousers to General
Hunter's regiment, did not think the authority sufficient to justify the
payment of the regiment. The first regiment, as raised by General
Saxton, numbered four hundred and ninety-nine men when Colonel Higginson
took command of it on the 1st of December; and on the 19th of January,
1863, it had increased to eight hundred and forty-nine. It has made
three expeditions to Florida and Georgia,--one before Colonel Higginson
assumed the command, described in Mrs. Stowe's letter to the women of
England, and two under Colonel Higginson, one of which was made in
January up the St. Mary's, and the other in March to Jacksonville, which
it occupied for a few days until an evacuation was ordered from
head-quarters. The men are volunteers, having been led to enlist by duty
to their race, to their kindred still in bonds, and to us, their allies.
Their drill is good, and their time excellent. They have borne
themselves well in their expeditions, quite equalling the white
regiments in skirmishing. In _morale_ they seemed very much like white
men, and with about the same proportion of good and indifferent
soldiers. Some I saw of the finest metal, like Robert Sutton, whom
Higginson describes in his report as "the real conductor