Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/35

 quartermaster actually refused to turn the control of the steam transports over, as in duty bound, to the chief quartermaster of the Department, and had to be placed under arrest. One of the brigadiers, General Stevenson, openly proclaimed that he and his command would not fight beside "niggers," for which General Hunter had him arrested and confined. General Naglee, another brigadier, was also removed from command later on and sent North for manifesting a similar spirit of insubordination. Some of Foster's troops were guilty of perpetrating great outrages upon the colored people on some of the Sea Islands, and had to undergo rigorous disciplinary treatment. Altogether, the morale of the accessions from the North was unsatisfactory, and it was fortunate that offensive movements did not commence until the bad spirit had been in a measure suppressed.

I had announced in the Tribune, about the middle of February, that the intention was to send another expedition of colored troops from Hilton Head on a regular recruiting mission among the negro population of a certain Southern State, and that thousands of muskets would be taken along to arm male slaves. The publication caused a great sensation in the North, some of the conservative Republican papers pronouncing the news an outright malicious canard, while the "Copperhead" press denounced in the most violent language the attempt to excite "servile insurrection." I was even personally attacked as the author of the bogus intelligence. But, a week later, the correctness of theinformation was proved by the actual departure of over a thousand black troops, under Colonel Higginson, on the very errand I had foretold. Forays were made up a number of streams on the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, but the expedition was far less successful than expected, as many slave-owners had run their human chattels off into the interior. It brought back, however, a few hundred black recruits, many of them with their families.

Excepting the incidents mentioned, the month of