I am anxiously hoping to be freed from this place by the sales and to return to my old neighborhood, and there to be able to accomplish something. This is but a stand-still experience, compared to our wishes. The people advance in spite of it. I believe almost the only real good I've done was to partially protect these people for three days from the soldiers.
FROM H. W.
March 5. C. came home at night with the news that the First South Carolina Volunteers started on an expedition[117] to-day which Colonel Higginson considers of very great importance, which will have very great results, or from which they will probably never return. Also that drafting has begun in Beaufort by Hunter's orders.
General Saxton has passed his word to the people here that they shall not be forced into the army—I don't see what is to be the upshot of it—they will lose all confidence in us. Anywhere but here! Saxton himself gave Colonel Montgomery[118] leave to draft in Florida and Key West, but he had no need to—more recruits offered than he could bring away with him. I don't wish to find fault with my commanding general, but I have yet to be shown the first thing Hunter has done which I consider wise or fine. Saxton has had to go down more than once and persuade him not to execute his orders.
In the following letter the reference to Mrs. Wolcott and McClellan has to do with that visit to Boston of the deposed general which was made such a triumphal progress for him by the conservatives of the town. The reference to Hallowell, who had a commission in the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, the first colored regiment raised by a state government, is interesting as further evidence of the prejudice against negro troops.
March 6. C. brought me last night a long letter from S. descriptive of Mrs. Wolcott's party, McClellan, the fashions, and Hallowell's feeling at the position in which he places himself in going into a negro regiment. I wish he could see Colonel Higginson and his, but a Northern black regiment will be a very different thing from a Southern one—the men will have the vices of civilization from which these are free. Colonel Higginson is an enthusiast, but I do not see that he exaggerates or states anything but facts.
Then follow specimens of the conversation of Robert and Rose, with which may be put here two others, really of later date.
"Miss Hayiut, that your home?" Robert asked me this morning, looking at some colored pictures of the Crystal Palace I found in a London News and nailed up in the entry yesterday! He's bound to go North with Mass' Charlie. If he expects to live in such a mansion I don't wonder he wishes to.
Saturday, March 7. If you could have seen Rose's astonishment this morning when she comprehended that the clock was not alive! I made her tell me what time it was, which she did successfully, and then, as she stood gazing at the minute-hand "move so fast," I said, "Yes, it is going all the time—it never stops." "No rest for eat?" she said with the utmost innocence; and when I told her it was not alive and did not need to eat, she was quite sure the pendulum must be if the hands were not.
[March 10.[119]] Some instructions about cleaning up led me to ask Rose if she liked dirt, to which she replied, like a true Yankee, with the question, "Miss Hay't, you like um? You no like um, I no like um." A little while after, she got talking about "Maussa" and Cockloft; when I asked what she would do if she should see Mr. Coffin come here, she said, "I run," "dey bad." Oh, no, not bad, I guess. "Miss Hay't" (you have no idea how short it is, almost "Hat"), "you shum? [see 'em] Well, you do'no; I shum, I know."