o
the neighborhood of the platform, and allowed to sit or stand, as at the
Sunday services; the platform was occupied by ladies and dignitaries,
and by the band of the Eighth Maine, which kindly volunteered for the
occasion; the colored people filled up all the vacant openings in the
beautiful grove around, and there was a cordon of mounted visitors
beyond. Above, the great live-oak branches and their trailing moss;
beyond the people, a glimpse of the blue river.

The services began at half-past eleven o'clock, with prayer by our
chaplain, Mr. Fowler, who is always, on such occasions, simple,
reverential, and impressive. Then the President's Proclamation was read
by Dr. W. H. Brisbane, a thing infinitely appropriate, a
South-Carolinian addressing South-Carolinians; for he was reared among
these very islands, and here long since emancipated his own slaves. Then
the colors were presented to us by the Rev. Mr. French, a chaplain who
brought them from the donors in New York. All this was according to the
programme. Then followed an incident so simple, so touching, so utterly
unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling,
though it gave the key-note to the whole day. The very moment the
speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for
the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly
arose, close beside the platform, a strong male voice, (but rather
cracked and elderly,) into which two women's voices instantly blended,
singing, as if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the
morning note of the song-sparrow,--

"My Country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!"

People looked at each other, and then at us on the platform, to see
whence came, this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and
irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of
the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I
motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made all
other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last
unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art could not
have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should be so
affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak of it,
after it was ended, tears were everywhere. If you could have heard how
quaint and innocent it was! Old Tiff and his children might have sung