Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

“ [320] with us, will you?” Jim was lying down, resting on his elbow; he sprang up instantly, seized my hand, and, giving it a hearty shake, said, “Yes, I'll go with you, if it is only as sergeant.” No one was more disappointed at the failure of the plan, and no one would have been more proud than he to have seen his dearly loved “Bob” leading his determined and well-drilled command into the field of action.

The following letter merits insertion as indicating his feeling on the same general subject.

about four miles South of Strasburg, Virginia, Sunday, March 30, 1862.

my dearest——, . . . . . The march was quiet and through the most lovely country, approaching the Shenandoah range and river. The next day, Sunday, we were to have gone as far as Goose Creek, wherever that may be; but the hastily constructed bridge over the river broke down early in the day, and two mules out of a mule team became fractious and were drowned, which must have been a relief to them. So we waited all day for the bridge to be mended, and were entertained by the contrabands from the neighboring country, who flocked to see the “sogers,” and told us strange stories that they had learned from their masters about us Yankees. How that they said that if the d-d Yankees got hold of them, they would cut their right hands and feet off, so that they could no longer be of service to their masters; and they thought that their masters had gained all the battles in the war, and had whipped us terribly, and nothing was ever said to them of the Union victories, and how sorry they were that we were not victorious at Bull Run. And then they told us of the effect that the attack of “old Mr. Brown,” as he is here called by the blacks, had on them and their masters; how they thought he must have had some hundreds of men with him; and how all the blacks about there knew he was their friend and the terror of their white rulers. One man (almost as white as I, quite as light as Captain R——), the son of his master, and the father of nine children, two of whom he had with him, interested me very much. His boys were very handsome little fellows, about eight and ten years, and looked like Neapolitans, perhaps a little fairer. His gratitude to God, when he told us how his wife and children had all been left to him, while so many of his neighbors had lost theirs by having them sold, was very touching. He did n't know how he could ever have borne it;