Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[79] use of fire, which every child knows in the abstract, and which I found to hold true in the practice. On our way down river we had opportunity to test this again.

The ruined town of St. Mary's had at that time a bad reputation, among both naval and military men. Lying but a short distance above Fernandina, on the Georgia side, it was occasionally visited by our gunboats. I was informed that the only residents of the town were three old women, who were apparently kept there as spies,that, on our approach, the aged crones would come out and wave white handkerchiefs,--that they would receive us hospitably, profess to be profoundly loyal, and exhibit a portrait of Washington,--that they would solemnly assure us that no Rebel pickets had been there for many weeks,--but that in the adjoining yard we should find fresh horse-tracks, and that we should be fired upon by guerillas the moment we left the wharf. My officers had been much excited by these tales; and I had assured them that, if this programme were literally carried out, we would straightway return and burn the town, or what was left of it, for our share. It was essential to show my officers and men that, while rigid against irregular outrage, we could still be inexorable against the enemy.

We had previously planned to stop at this town, on our way down river, for some valuable lumber which we had espied on a wharf; and gliding down the swift current, shelling a few bluffs as we passed, we soon reached it. Punctual as the figures in a panorama appeared the old ladies with their white handkerchiefs. Taking possession of the town, much of which had previously been destroyed by the gunboats, and stationing the color-guard, to their infinite delight, in the cupola of the most conspicuous house, I deployed skirmishers along the exposed