[174] "The First South," as the First South Carolina Volunteers was always called by the negroes, had in the spring been enrolled among the United States Colored Troops as the Thirty-Third Regiment.
[176] Both in the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Volunteers (colored).
[177] The battle of Honey Hill (near Grahamville), fought November 30.
[178] Of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts.
[179] F. H. was to take charge of Coffin's Point on C. P. W.'s leaving permanently for home a few weeks later. In connection with Mr. Philbrick's words about him and in preparation for his own letters, it is worth while to record something he had written in the autumn:
Oct. 7. St. Helena. I am slowly recovering from my three weeks' sickness,—more buoyant and hopeful than ever before. I seem to have a new birth, with new aspirations, and new views—particularly in regard to life and its duties and prospects among the freed people of South Carolina.
If God is not in it, then I am laboring under hallucination.
[180] The crop of 1864 had cost Mr. Philbrick about $1.00 a pound, and he thought it quite possible that the crop of 1865 might not fetch more than that in the market. It will be seen that his fears were more than justified.
[181] General Oliver O. Howard.