Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[88] every other building and all the piles of lumber, and for the moment it seemed as if the sacrifice would be righteous. But I forbore, and only took as trophies the instruments of torture and the keys of the jail.

We found but few colored people in this vicinity; some we brought away with us, and an old man and woman preferred to remain. All the white males whom we found I took as hostages, in order to shield us, if possible, from attack on our way down river, explaining to them that they would be put on shore when the dangerous points were passed. I knew that their wives could easily send notice of this fact to the Rebel forces along the river. My hostages were a forlorn-looking set of “crackers,” far inferior to our soldiers in physique, and yet quite equal, the latter declared, to the average material of the Southern armies. None were in uniform, but this proved nothing as to their being soldiers. One of them, a mere boy, was captured at his own door, with gun in hand. It was a fowling-piece, which he used only, as his mother plaintively assured me, “to shoot little birds with.” As the guileless youth had for this purpose loaded the gun with eighteen buck-shot, we thought it justifiable to confiscate both the weapon and the owner, in mercy to the birds.

We took from this place, for the use of the army, a flock of some thirty sheep, forty bushels of rice, some other provisions, tools, oars, and a little lumber, leaving all possible space for the bricks which we expected to obtain just below. I should have gone farther up the river, but for a dangerous boom which kept back a great number of logs in a large brook that here fell into the St. Mary's; the stream ran with force, and if the Rebels had wit enough to do it, they might in ten minutes so