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Four regiments took part in the brigade drills and the
Colonel of the 1st South Carolina wrote:—
I think mine does best, but perhaps each little Col. thinks the same. . . .
I am sitting in Court Martial waiting for the court; this is the 3rd day we have tried to meet ineffectually—we are to try several men for their lives who have tried to desert to the enemy and [we] ought to get at work.
Several of the conscripts have tried to bribe negroes to take them to the other side, and have actually started.
Meantime,
Mrs. Higginson had decided to remove to
Newport, Rhode Island, for her health.
Her husband wrote from Camp Shaw, November, 1863:—
I can now see you at Newport, cat and two kitten . . . . I agree with you that at the end of my military pilgrimage, we might try Cambridge— indeed as people grow older they gravitate toward their birthplace.
As Christmas Day approached, the
Colonel wrote to his mother that the colored people were planning a great fair in
Beaufort ‘which enlisted all hands’; and that on New Year's Day there was to be a barbecue and dance in the evening at the principal restaurant.
He added:—
This saloon was to have been called Higginson Hall but the painter objected telling the proprietors
