Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[95] sentence of court-martial for an alleged act of mutiny,an affair in which the general voice of our officers sustained him and condemned his accusers, so that he soon received a full pardon, and was restored in honor to his place in the regiment, which he has ever since held.

Nothing can ever exaggerate the fascinations of war, whether on the largest or smallest scale. When we settled down into camp-life again, it seemed like a butterfly's folding its wings to re-enter the chrysalis. None of us could listen to the crack of a gun without recalling instantly the sharp shots that spilled down from the bluffs of the St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without recalling the sounds which startled us on the Field of the Hundred Pines. The memory of our raid was preserved in the camp by many legends of adventure, growing vaster and more incredible as time wore on,-- and by the morning appeals to the surgeon of some veteran invalids, who could now cut off all reproofs and suspicions with “Doctor, I's been a sickly pusson eber since de expeditious.” But to me the most vivid remembrancer was the flock of sheep which we had “lifted.” The Post Quartermaster discreetly gave us the charge of them, and they filled a gap in the landscape and in the larder,--which last had before presented one unvaried round of impenetrable beef. Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck, when he decided to adopt a pastoral life, and assumed the provisional name of Thyrsis, never looked upon his flocks and herds with more unalloyed contentment than I upon that fleecy family. I had been familiar, in Kansas, with the metaphor by which the sentiments of an owner were credited to his property, and had heard of a pro-slavery colt and an antislavery cow. The fact that these sheep were but recently converted from “Secesh”