Resolved, 3. That to Admiral Dahlgren, United States Navy, we do hereby return our most sincere thanks for the noble manner in which he cared for and administered to the wants of our people at Georgetown, South Carolina; and be he assured that the same shall ever be held in grateful remembrance by us.
Resolved, 4. That to his Excellency, the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, we return our most sincere thanks and never-dying gratitude for the noble and patriotic manner in which he promulgated the doctrines of republicanism, and for his consistency in not only promising, but invariably conforming his actions thereto; and we shall ever be pleased to acknowledge and hail him as the champion of the rights of freemen.
Resolved, 5. That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to Brigadier General Hatch, Admiral Dahlgren, and his Excellency, the President of the United States, and that they be published in the Charleston Courier.
Moses B. Camplin, Chairman.
Robert C. De Large, Secretary.
The following we quote from him as descriptive of his impressions on his arrival at Charleston:—
“I entered the city, which, from earliest childhood and through life, I had learned to contemplate with feelings of the utmost abhorrence—a place of the most insufferable assumption and cruelty to the blacks; where the sound of the lash at the whipping-post, and the hammer of the auctioneer, were coördinate sounds in thrilling harmony; that place which had ever been closed against liberty by an arrogantly assumptuous despotism, such as well might have vied with the infamous King of Dahomey; the place from which had been expelled the envoy of Massachusetts, for daring to present the claims of the commonwealth in behalf of her free citizens, and into which, but a few days before, had proudly entered in triumph the gallant Schemmelfening, leading with wild shouts the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment, composed of some of the best blood and finest youths of the colored citizens of the Union. For a moment I paused—then, impelled by the impulse of my mission, I found myself dashing on in unmeasured strides through the city, as if under a forced march to attack the already crushed and fallen enemy. Again I halted to look upon the shattered walls of the once stately but now deserted edifices of the proud and supercilious occupants. A doomed city it appeared to be, with few, or none but soldiers and the colored inhabitants. The haughty Carolinians, who believed their state an empire, this city incomparable, and themselves invincible, had fled in dismay and consternation at the approach of their conquerors, leaving the metropolis to its fate. And but for the vigilance and fidelity of the colored firemen, and other colored inhabitants, there would have been nothing left but a smouldering plain of ruins in the place where Charleston once stood, from the firebrands in the hands of the flying whites. Reaching the upper district, in the neighborhood of the citadel, I remained at the private residence of one of the most respectable colored citizens (free before the war), until quarters suitable could be secured. Whatever impressions may have previously been entertained concerning the free colored people of Charleston, their manifestation from my advent till my departure, gave evidence of their pride in identity and appreciation of race that equal in extent the proudest Caucasian.”
Many were the scenes of interest there related, on the entry of the troops into Charleston, some of a most thrilling character. It was a memorable day to the enslaved. An incident is related—that a soldier, mounted on a mule, dashed up Meeting Street, at the head of the advancing column, bearing in his hand, as he rode, a white flag, upon which was inscribed, in large black letters, LIBERTY! and loudly proclaiming it as he went. An old woman, who the night before had lain down a slave, and even on that morning was uncertain of her master’s movements, whether or not she should be carried into the interior of the state, as had been proposed with the evacuation, now heard the shouts of people and the cry of liberty reëchoed by hundreds of voices. In the deep gratitude of her heart to God, she was seen to rush with outstretched arms, as if to clasp this herald of freedom. The soldier being in the saddle, and consequently beyond her reach, unconsciously she hugged the mule around the neck, shouting, “Thank God! thank God!” So fraught with deep emotion were the bystanders at this scene, that it drew tears from the eyes of many, instead of creating merriment, as it would have done under different circumstances.
A lady, in rehearsing to another this scene and others of that day, said, “O, had you been here, you would have felt like embracing something yourself, had it been but to grasp a flag-staff, or touch the drapery of the floating colors.”