despised race, who were endowed with rare abilities. The men were ready to enlist and fight for the man who had given them their freedom. The enlistment of negro troops began at Port Royal in the fall of

SLAVES GOING TO JOIN THE UNION ARMY.

1862, and by midwinter the First South Carolina, commanded by Colonel Higginson, had its ranks nearly full. There was strong prejudice in the army against employing negroes. The New Jersey troops in the

department of the South were bitterly hostile.

Colonel Stevenson, of Massachusetts, a gallant officer, having imprudently given utterance to his feelings upon the subject, was arrested by General Hunter, which caused a great deal of excitement in the army, and which attracted the attention of the country to the whole subject.

The day after the arrest of Colonel Stevenson, a scene illustrating the sentiments of the hour occurred in the cabin of the steamer Wyoming, plying between Beaufort and Hilton Head. The party consisted of several ladies, one or two chaplains, fifteen or twenty officers, four newspaper correspondents, and several civilians.

A young captain in the Tenth New Jersey opened the conversation. "I wish," said he, " that every negro was compelled to take off his hat to a white man. I consider him an inferior being."

"You differ from General Washington, who took off his hat and saluted a negro," I replied.

"General Washington could afford to do it," said the captain, a little staggered.

"Are we to understand that in this age a captain in the service of the United States cannot afford to equal a negro in politeness?"

"Do you want to be buried with a nigger, and have your bones touch his in the grave?"

"As to that I have no feeling whatever. I do not suppose that it will make much difference to the bones of either party."

"Well, when I die I want twenty niggers packed all around me," shouted the captain, excitedly, turning to the crowd to see the effect of his sarcasm.

"I presume, sir, you can be accommodated, if you can get the consent of the twenty negroes."

The captain saw that he was losing his argument by losing his temper, and in calmer tones said: "I want to see the negro kept in his proper place. I am perfectly willing he should use the shovel, but it is an outrage upon the white man, an insult, to have him carry a musket."

"I would just as soon see a negro shot as to get shot myself. I am perfectly willing that all the negroes should help put down the Rebellion," said the correspondent.

"I am not willing to have them act as soldiers. Put them in the ditches, where they belong. They are an inferior race."

One of my fellow correspondents broke in. "Who are you, sir?"

said he; "you who condemn the Government? You forget that you as a soldier have nothing to say about the orders of the President or the laws of Congress. You say that the negro is an inferior being; what do you say of Frederick Douglass, who has raised himself from slavery to a high position? Your straps were placed on your shoulders, not because you had done anything to merit them, but because you had friends to intercede for you,— using their political influence, or because you had money, and could purchase your commission. You hate the negro, and you want to keep him in slavery, and you allow your prejudice to carry you to the verge of disloyalty to the Government which pays you for unworthily wearing your shoulder-straps."

The captain and the entire company listened in silence while another correspondent took up the question.

"Gentlemen, you denounce the negro; you say that he is an inferior being. You forget that we white men claim to stand on the highest plane of civilisation, — that we are of a race which for a thousand years has been in the front rank, that the negro has been bruised, crushed, trodden down, denied all knowledge, all right, everything; that we have compelled him to labour for us, and we have eaten the fruit of his labours. Can we expect him to be our equal in acquisition of knowledge? Where is your sense of fair play? Are you afraid that the negro will push you from your position? Are you afraid that if you allow him to aid in putting down the Rebellion, that he too will become a free man, and have aspirations like your own, and in time express toward you the same chivalric sentiments which you express toward him? How much do you love your country if you thus make conditions of loyalty?"

The captain made no reply. The whole company was silent. There were smiles from the ladies. The captain went out upon the deck, evidently regretting that the conversation had fallen upon so exciting a topic.

The First South Carolina Regiment of loyal blacks was in camp on Smith's plantation, four miles out from Beaufort. We rode over a sandy plain, through old cotton fields, pine-barrens, and jungles, past a dozen negro huts, where the long tresses of moss waved mournfully in the breeze. The men had gathered a boat-load of oysters, and were having a feast, old and young, gray-headed men, and curly-haired children, were huddled around the pans, steaming and smoking over the pitchknot fires.

Smith's plantation is historic ground, -the place where the Huguenots built a fort long before the Mayflower cast anchor in Cape Cod harbour. The plantation was well known to the coloured people before the war as a place to be dreaded, a place for hard work, unmerciful whippings, with very little to eat. The house and the negro quarters were in a delightful grove of live-oaks, whose evergreen leaves, wide-spreading branches, thick foliage, and gnarled trunks, gave cooling shade.

In

front of the house, leading down to the fort, was a magnolia walk. Behind the house, in a circular basin, a depression often found on sandy plains, was the garden, surrounded by a thick-set, fantastic palmetto hedge. The great oak between the house and the garden was the whipping-post. One of the branches was smooth, as if a swing had been slung there, and the bark had been worn by the rope swaying to the merry chattering and light-hearted laughter of children. Not that,

however. There the offender of plantation law, of a master's caprice, --- had paid the penalty of disobedience; there men, women, and children, suspended by the thumb, stripped of their clothing, received the

lash, their moans, groans, cries, and prayers falling unheeding on overseer, master, and mistress.

The plantation jail was in the loft of the granary, beneath a pitch