• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1051 0

importance when he contemplated his role in this war. “Men and women, old and young, were running through the streets, shouting and praising God,” one soldier wrote after his regiment had entered Wilmington, North Carolina. “We could then truly see what we had been fighting for, and could almost realize the fruits of our labors.” With his regiment nearing Richmond, another soldier exulted, “We have been instrumental in liberating some five hundred of our sisters and brethren from the accursed yoke of human bondage.” The scenes which greeted black soldiers in their march through the South—abandoned plantation houses, joyous celebrations of freedom, reunions of families separated by slavery, the shocked and angry faces of white men and women—were bound to make a deep and lasting impression. For many of the northern blacks, this was their first look at the South and the Southerner. “I have noticed a strange peculiarity among the people here,” a soldier with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment noted. “They are all the most outrageous stutterers. If you meet one and say, ‘How are you?’ as you pass, you could walk a whole block before he could sputter out the Southern, ‘Right smart, I thank-ee.’ ” The soldiers were moved not only by the effusive welcomes they usually received from the slaves but also by observing at first hand the effects of a lifetime of bondage. “I often sit down and hear the old mothers down here tell how they have been treated,” a Pennsylvania soldier wrote. “It would make your heart ache.… They have frequently shown me the deep marks of the cruel whip upon their backs.” Many of the black soldiers located family members and revived old friendships, while some began courtships that would result in new relationships.69

Perhaps most memorable were the occasions on which the soldiers who had once been slaves were afforded the opportunity to manifest their contempt for the relics and symbols of their enslavement. “We is a gwine to pay our respectable compliments to our old masters,” one soldier declared, summing up the sentiments of his regiment. While marching through a region, the black troops would sometimes pause at a plantation, ascertain from the slaves the name of the “meanest” overseer in the neighborhood, and then, if he had not fled, “tie him backward on a horse and force him to accompany them.” Although a few masters and overseers were whipped or strung up by a rope in the presence of their slaves, this appears to have been a rare occurrence. More commonly, black soldiers preferred to apportion the contents of the plantation and the Big House among those whose labor had made them possible, singling out the more “notorious” slaveholders and systematically ransacking and demolishing their dwellings. “They gutted his mansion of some of the finest furniture in the world,” wrote Chaplain Henry M. Turner, in describing a regimental action in North Carolina. Having been informed of the brutal record of this slaveholder, the soldiers had resolved to pay him a visit. While the owner was forced to look on, they went to work on his “splendid mansion” and “utterly destroyed every thing on the place.” Wielding their axes indiscriminately, they shattered his piano and most of the furniture and ripped his expensive carpets to pieces. What they did not destroy they distributed among his slaves. And when the owner addressed one of the soldiers “rather saucily,” he was struck across the mouth and sent reeling to the floor. Chaplain Turner, who witnessed the action, obviously thought no explanation was necessary for the punishment meted out to this planter. “It was on Sabbath,” he noted, and “as Providence would have it,” the men had halted their march to eat and rest near the home of this “infamous” slaveholder.

Oh, that I could have been a Hercules, that I might have carried off some of the fine mansions, with all their gaudy furniture. How rich I would be now? But I was not. When the rich owners would use insulting language, we let fire do its work of destruction. A few hours only are necessary to turn what costs years