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Harlan P. Martin Papers

出版	1865
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=cg6YjwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋In his second letter, 31 January 1865, Martin writes from South Carolina, at a site across the Savannah River from the Sisters Ferry crossing in Effingham County (Georgia). Martin observes that many white citizens had fled the area and lived as refugees elsewhere, while many of the enslaved African Americans hid in the swamps as maroons awaiting the arrival of Union troops. He reports his uncertainty as to his next destination, warning his mother that he would not be able to write again for perhaps a month because his regiment was about to embark on a campaign and does not "know what place we shall strike, for some think Augusta, Ga. and others Charleston, S.C., but I think Branchville, S.C. will be our first point, and from there to Charleston." He believed that "the citizens have fled to safer parts of the Confederacy" because "they know retribution is close on their heels." He writes that whites "generally take all able bodied niggers, cattle, horses and stock with them." He reports that as they go, they also burn their houses and out buildings. He notes that "a good many niggers hide out in the swamp" until the Union Army arrives in an area. Martin believed they had "a childish confidence in uniform." He pities the formerly enslaved people, writing that he has "seen slaves who were but a whit above the mules and horses in intelligence." He tells his mother that he likes "to do them a kindness, it seems as if they never had a kind act done to them before.... [Some formerly enslaved people] came out to our camp and sang hymns and prayed for us." The talented African-American song leader "could neither read or write" but was "smarter than a good many ordained ministers I have heard."