[225] Irish friends; one [of them] swore worse than all my officers put together and the other never opened her lips and was the most formidable tyrant of the two —Those two brave men whom I had seen stand to their guns in the hottest fire on the St. Mary's were like whipped spaniels before those women.In March, 1863, Colonel Higginson was sent in command of two regiments (1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteers) to Florida, the objects of this expedition being to occupy Jacksonville, and to carry Lincoln's ‘proclamation of freedom to the enslaved.’ He wrote to his wife on the 12th that he was quartered in a palatial abode, embowered in tea roses, and that the town had capitulated ‘without a gun.’ Here more or less light skirmishing went on, but the Colonel reported that his regiment lived in clover and brought in ‘contrabands,’ horses, and provisions every day. To hold this post with only a garrison of nine hundred men, it having been evacuated twice before by Union troops, made the officers uneasy, but reinforcements relieved this anxiety. Shells were thrown into the town, with the only result of disposing of a mosquito net; and on March 27, the Colonel in command noted that danger was about over and they were eagerly expecting further orders from General Hunter. Then came an order for the third evacuation of
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