to go, they joined in singing "The Freedmen's Battle-Hymn," sung as a solo and repeated in chorus:

The coloured soldiers of Foster's army sang it at the battle of Honey Hill, while preparing to go into the fight. How gloriously it sounded now, sung by five hundred freedmen in the Savannah slave mart, where some of the singers had been sold in days gone by! It was worth a trip from Boston to Savannah to hear it.

The next morning, in the same room, I saw a school of one hundred coloured children assembled, taught by coloured teachers, who sat on the auctioneer's platform, from which had risen voices of despair instead of accents of love, brutal cursing instead of Christian teaching. I listened to the recitations, and heard their songs of jubilee. The slave mart transformed to a schoolhouse! Civilisation and Christianity had indeed begun their beneficent work.

Planters from the interior of the State were bringing their cotton to market in flatboats.

I made excursions into the surrounding country, visited Thunder Bolt battery, constructed by the Confederates, rode along country roads, through old fields, and through forests of live-oak, sombre with the long trails of moss swaying from the branches.

The negroes were selecting patches of ground for planting, going out in the early morning in squads. It was noticeable that they would not

work alone. They must have company, somebody to join in the chorus of their songs. Desire for sociability was a marked characteristic.

War had left its desolation upon the entire section. The former owners of the plantations had fled, or were serving in Southern armies,

or were at rest forever in unknown graves on the fields where battles had been fought, giving their lives ostensibly to maintain the rights of the

States, but in reality to perpetuate a system which was antagonistic to the growing consciousness of the whole human race.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SHERMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

GENERAL SHERMAN received, soon after his arrival in Savannah, instructions from General Grant to hasten with his army to James River. Transports were sent down for the shipment of the troops. Grant desired to combine the two great armies, throw Sherman upon his own. left flank, and sever Lee's communications with the South, and also prevent his escape. Through all the long months of summer, autumn, and winter, from June to February, Grant had put forth his energies to accomplish this object, but had not been able to cut the Danville road, Lee's chief line of supply or retreat. The arrival of Sherman upon the seacoast made the plan feasible.

But that officer thought it better to march northward, driving the enemy before him, and finish up the entire rebel forces on the Atlantic coast; besides, South Carolina deserved a retribution as severe as that which had been meted out to Georgia. He also believed that he could thus join Grant quite as soon as by the more circuitous route by water. Grant assented to the proposition, and having full confidence in the ability of his lieutenant, left him to coöperate in the manner he thought most advisable.

The Confederates expected that Sherman would move upon Charleston, but such was not his intention. He determined to make a movement which would compel its evacuation, while at the same time he could drive the forces in the interior of the State northward, and, by destroying all the railroads in his progress, and severing Lee from the agricultural regions of the South, so cripple his resources as to paralyse the rebel army before Richmond, and bring the war to a speedy close.

He wished to preserve his army entire, and accordingly a division of the Nineteenth Corps, which had fought under Emory in the Southwest and under Grover in the Shenandoah, having no enemy to pursue after the annihilation of Early, was sent down to garrison Savannah, Grover being made commandant of the post.

General Howard, commanding the right wing, took transports with

.

the Seventeenth Corps, Blair's, for Beaufort, whence he pushed into the interior, striking the Charleston and Savannah Railroad at Pocatoligo, and establishing there a depot of supplies. The Fifteenth Corps, Logan's, followed, except Corse's division, which, being prevented by freshets from marching direct to Pocatoligo, moved with the left wing, commanded by Williams, joining the Twentieth Corps, and crossing the Savannah marched to Hardeeville, on the Charleston Railroad, and opened communication with Howard.

General Howard and General Williams both extended courteous invitations to me to accompany them in the march northward. It was a courtesy not easily declined, but a newspaper correspondent must ever forego personal preference, if he would render acceptable service to his constituency. It seemed reasonable to conclude that Sherman's movement through the interior of South Carolina would compel the Confederates to evacuate Charleston.

It was this city in which Secession was inaugurated; the city which the people of the North hoped to see humiliated. The people of Charleston confidently expected that Sherman's next movement would be in that direction; the Northern people expected the same. General Sherman made no statement in regard to the proposed movement, but as he intended to live largely upon the country, it was reasonable to conclude that he would avoid the sparsely settled section along the seacoast, and that his line of march would be inland away from the broad rivers and estuaries of the seacoast section.

Having a desire to enter Charleston, and knowing that if I accompanied the army I would have no means of communicating with the paper I represented, I declined the kind courtesies, and awaited coming events at Port Royal, where General Gillmore, in command of the department, had established his headquarters.

The march began with the movement of the Fourteenth Corps and Geary's division of the Twentieth, to Sister's Ferry, fifty miles above Savannah. The détour was necessary on account of the flooding of the country by freshets. The gunboat Pontiac was sent up to cover the crossing. When Slocum reached the river at Sister's Ferry he found it three miles in width, and too deep to ford, and was obliged to wait till the 7th of February before he could cross. This movement deceived Hardee and Beauregard. The presence of Howard at Pocatoligo looked like an advance upon Charlestown, while Slocum being at Sister's Ferry indicated an attack upon Augusta. The Confederate