She presented a fair mark with her sloping sides and double turrets. Her commander, Captain Rhind, although not having entire confidence in her invulnerability, was determined to come to close quarters. He was not to be outdone by those who had led the advance. Swifter than they, drawing less water, she made haste to get up with the Weehawken. The guns which had been trained upon the others were brought to bear upon her. Her plating was as pine wood to the steel projectiles, flying with almost the swiftness of a minie - bullet. Shot which glanced harmlessly from the others penetrated her angled sides. Her after-turret was pierced in a twinkling, and a two-hundred pound projectile dropped inside. A shot crashed into the surgeon's dispensary. The sea with every passing wave swept through the shot-holes, and she was forced to retire or go to

the bottom with all on board.

The tide was ebbing fast, and the signal for withdrawal was displayed by the flag-ship. It was raised, seemingly, at an inopportune moment, for the firing of the fort had sensibly diminished, while that from the monitors was steady and true. Never had there been such a hammering of iron and smashing of masonry as during the two and a half hours of the engagement.

We ran alongside the Keokuk. A glance at her sides showed how terrible the fire had been. Her smoke-stack, turrets, sides-all were scarred, gashed, pierced through and through. An inspection revealed ninety-four shot-marks. There were none below the water-line, but each wave swept through the holes on the sides. Only three of her officers and crew were wounded, although she had been so badly perforated.

"All right, nobody seriously hurt, ready for them again!" was the hearty response of Capt. George Rodgers, of the Catskill, as I stepped upon the deck of that vessel and grasped the hand of her wide-awake coinmander. The vessel had received about thirty shots. One 200-pounder had struck the deck, bending but not breaking or penetrating the iron. On the sides, on the turret, and on the pilot-house were indentations like saucers, but there was no sign of serious damage.

Going on board the Nahant we found that eleven of her officers and crew had received contusions from the flying of bolt-heads in the turret. One shot had jammed its lower ridge, interfering with its revolution. She had been struck forty times, but the armor was intact.

The other monitors had each a few bolts started. Four gun-carriages needed repairs-injured not by the enemy's shot, but by their own recoil. One shot had ripped up the plating of the Patapsco and pierced the wood-work beneath. This was the only one, out of the twenty-five

hundred or three thousand fired from the forts, which penetrated the mon itors!

The New Ironsides had received thirty balls, all of which had been turned by her armor.

One hundred and fifty-three shots were fired by the fleet, against more than twenty-five hundred by the Confederates. The monitors were struck in the aggregate about three hundred and fifty times.

About six thousand pounds of iron were hurled at Fort Sumter during the short time the fleet was engaged, and five or six times that amount of metal, or thirty thousand pounds, thrown at the fleet. The casualties on board the fleet were-none killed; one mortally, one seriously, and thirteen slightly wounded.

It is now known that the Confederate commander, General Ripley, was

on the point of evacuating the fort when the signal was made for the fleet to withdraw, for the wall was badly shattered, and a few more shots would have made it a ruin.

The iron-clads returned to Hilton Head, the expedition was abandoned, and Sumter was left to float its flag in defiance of Federal authority.

The Proclamation of Emancipation will ever be regarded as a great historic event in the history of our country, but coincident with it was another of great moment-the enlistment of the slaves as soldiers of the republic. A few men from the beginning had seen that the time would probably come when both the North and the South would enlist the slaves in some form. The Confederacy used them to construct the batteries on Morris Island for the bombardment of Sumter. Thousands had been employed to build the fortifications around Richmond, at Fort Donelson,

Vicksburg, and Port Hudson. When the war began the Confederates conceived the idea of enlisting, not slaves, but free negroes, and a recruiting-office was opened in Memphis.(') In June, 1861, Tennessee passed a law for the enlisting of free negroes to do menial work in the military service of the State. The free negroes of New Orleans fourteen hundred of them were organized into a regiment. The New Orleans Picayune said of their review :

"We must pay a deserved compliment to the companies of free colored men, all very well drilled and comfortably uniformed. Most of them, unaided by the administration, have supplied themselves with arms, without regard to cost or trouble."()

A few weeks later, when the Hartford and other vessels of Admiral Farragut's fleet appeared at New Orleans, the regiment of free negroes in the Confederate service disappeared as swiftly as the dew-drops before the sun on a summer morning. The loss of Fort Donelson, the battle of Shiloh, and the fall of New Orleans so inflamed the editor of the Confederacy, a newspaper published in Georgia, that he said:

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We must fight the devil with fire, by arming our negroes to fight the Yankees. No doubt that in Georgia alone we could pick up ten thousand negroes that would rejoice in meeting fifteen thousand Yankees in deadly conflict. We would be willing almost to risk the fate of the South upon such an encounter in the open field."(*)

Very early in the war the colored people of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia declared their willingness to enlist as soldiers, but there was a very great prejudice against color throughout the Northern States. The degrading influence of slavery had so permeated society that negroes were regarded as an inferior creation, who had no natural rights equal to those with which white men were endowed. It would be degrading to the manhood of a white soldier to stand in the ranks with a negro by his side; such was the feeling.

The expedition to Port Royal, in 1861, was commanded by General Thomas W. Sherman, who received authority from the Adjutant-general of the United States to "employ all persons offering their services for the defence of the Union."() He was succeeded in command by General David Hunter, who, in May, 1862, issued orders for the recruiting of the First South Carolina Regiment of negroes. The action of General Hunter was condemned by a very large proportion of the newspapers of the Northern States. Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, offered a resolution in Congress, asking for information from the Secretary of War, if a regiment of black men, fugitive slaves, had been organized; whether the War Department

had authorized such action, and if the negroes had been furnished with uniforms and arms. The Secretary of War sent the resolution to General Hunter, at Port Royal, who replied that no regiment of "fugitive slaves had been organized, but a fine regiment of persons had been collected, whose late masters were "fugitive rebels." Thus read the reply:

"It is the masters who have, in every instance, been the fugitives, running away from loyal slaves as well as loyal soldiers, and whom we have only been able partially to see-chiefly their heads over ramparts, or, rifle in hand, dodging behind trees in the extreme distance. In the absence of any ‘fugitive master laws' the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy, had not the crime of treason given them the right to pursue, capture, and bring back those persons of whom they had been suddenly bereft."()

The letter of General Hunter was read everywhere through the Northern States, and gave great satisfaction to those who wished to see the negroes marshalled under the Stars and Stripes. General Hunter gave freedom papers to all the members of the regiment.

General Phelps, of Vermont, was in Louisiana, and said to General Butler, in command there, that fifty regiments of negroes could be enlisted, but was informed by that officer that he was to use the negro as a laborer, not as a soldier.

"I am not willing to become the mere slave-driver you propose, haying no qualification that way," was the reply from General Phelps, who sent in his resignation.

A governor of a State had a right to enlist negroes, and on August 4th, 1862, Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island, appealed to the negroes of that State to enlist. The tide was rising, and in August General Butler issued an appeal to the free negroes of New Orleans-those who had formed the regiment under the Confederates, who were mustered into the service of the United States-and on the same day President Lincoln authorized the enlistment of negroes in South Carolina, making no distinction as to condition, whether free or slave.

The enlistment of negroes who had been slaves gave offence to the Democratic party, and to some of the officers in the army, who regarded the negro as an inferior being. They said that the slaves would murder their masters and families. These were the words of the London Times:

"It means ten thousand domestic tragedies, in which women and children will be the victims."()

I visited Beaufort, South Carolina, and the sea islands, from which the planters had all fled, leaving their slaves behind. Colonel T. W. Higgin

son, of Boston, gathered anew the members of the First South Carolina Regiment on a plantation near Beaufort, which before the war was the summer home of the rich slave-holders of South Carolina, whose stately mansions looked down the beautiful bay-occupied now by their former slaves, who had deserted their little cabins and were making themselves at home in the parlors and bedchambers of those who had brought about the war. I rode out to the camp of the First South Carolina loyal troops through old cotton-fields, beneath oaks with wide-spreading branches, over

laden with jasmine and honeysuckle, and along an avenue bordered by magnolias in bloom, filling the air with fragrance, beneath trees from whose branches drooped festoons of dark-gray moss, which waved mournfully in the breeze.

The regiment was encamped on a plantation owned by a man who had been a cruel master, who used to tie up his slaves by the thumbs, their arms stretched high above their heads, their toes just touching the ground.