Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

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[237] speeched, I speeched, we all embraced symbolically, and cheered some more. Then we went to work at the wharf; vast wagon-loads of tents,,rations, ordnance, and what — not disappeared in the capacious maw of the Delaware. In the midst of it all came riding down General Saxton with a despatch from Hilton Head:--

“If you think the amount of small-pox in the First South Carolina Volunteers sufficient, the order will be countermanded.”

“What shall I say?” quoth the guilty General, perceiving how preposterously too late the negotiation was reopened.

“Say, sir?” quoth I. “say that we are on board already and the small-pox left behind. Say we had only thirteen cases, chiefly varioloid, and ten almost well.”

Our blood was up with a tremendous morning's work done, and, rather than turn back, we felt ready to hold down Major-General Gillmore, commanding department, and all his staff upon the wharf, and vaccinate them by main force.

So General Saxton rode away, and we worked away. Just as the last wagon-load but one was being transferred to the omnivorous depths of the Delaware,which I should think would have been filled ten times over with what we had put into it,--down rode the General with a fiendish joy in his bright eyes and held out a paper,--one of the familiar rescripts from headquarters.

The marching orders of the First South Carolina Volunteers are hereby countermanded.

“ Major Trowbridge,” said I, “will you give my compliments to Lieutenant Hooper, somewhere in the hold of that steamer, and direct him to set his men at work to ”