Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[85] regiment, already in hand. I observed with delight the good demeanor of my men towards these forlorn Anglo-Saxons, and towards the more tumultuous women. Even one soldier, who threatened to throw an old termagant into the river, took care to append the courteous epithet “Madam.”

I took a survey of the premises. The chief house, a pretty one with picturesque out-buildings, was that of Mrs. A., who owned the mills and lumber-wharves adjoining. The wealth of these wharves had not been exaggerated. There was lumber enough to freight half a dozen steamers, and I half regretted that I had agreed to take down a freight of bricks instead. Further researches made me grateful that I had already explained to my men the difference between public foraging and private plunder. Along the river-bank I found building after building crowded with costly furniture, all neatly packed, just as it was sent up from St. Mary's when that town was abandoned. Pianos were a drug; china, glass-ware, mahogany, pictures, all were here. And here were my men, who knew that their own labor had earned for their masters these luxuries, or such as these; their own wives and children were still sleeping on the floor, perhaps, at Beaufort or Fernandina; and yet they submitted, almost without a murmur, to the enforced abstinence. Bed and bedding for our hospitals they might take from those store-rooms,--such as the surgeon selected,--also an old flag which we found in a corner, and an old field-piece (which the regiment still possesses),--but after this the doors were closed and left unmolested. It cost a struggle to some of the men, whose wives were destitute, I know; but their pride was very easily touched, and when this abstinence was once recognized as a rule,