"Fourteen blacks fell into our hands, including a sergeant and corporal.  Five claimed to be free, the remainder finally confessing they were run-away slaves.  One hailed from Michigan, two or three from Massachusetts, one from Missouri, one from Maryland, and several from Kentucky.  One rascal, running up with his musket, exclaimed, "here, mossa, nebber shoot him off - tak um!'  showing evidently his low country origin, but unfortunately somebody's gun went off about the same time, and the fellow was killed.  They received no tender treatment during the skirmish, and the marsh in one place was thick with their dead bodies .  .  .  .  .  The prisoners believe they are to be hung, and give for a reason for fighting as well as they did, that they would rather die of bullet than rope.  It is a nice question whether they are to be recognized as belligerents or outlaws; and the indignation of our troops is not concealed at the thought that a white man may, by virtue of these captures, be one day exchanged for a negro.  The suggestion I have heard on the subject is that we may be compelled to respect the free blacks as recognized citizens of the North taken in arms, but that when a runaway slave is recaptured, he should be turned over to his master, and by him to the civil authorities, to be disposed of according to law.:

     Our captured men were taken to Charleston, and imprisoned in Charleston jail.  The next day the following telegram asking for instructions regarding them was sent to Richmond: -

     States also says that fifteen other prisoners of the Fifty-fourth were released at the same time as himself, and Baltimore Smith was of the number.  In perusing the list, it will appear that all of the twenty-nine are accounted for as having died or been exchanged except Baltimore Smith, John Gray, and Samuel R. Wilson.  Accepting States' recollection regarding Gray and Wilson, the last two may be supposed to have died prisoners.  The information that Corporal Hardy of Company B was wounded, given by States, is confirmed by the statement of Alfred Green, another of the prisoners, who lived to be released.
     States' account of his capture is that he was in the front crossing ditch, and gained the parapet.  Later, he lay in the ditch awaiting the reserves, and firing when he saw any one in the fort.  After a long time, the rebel officers called to those who were wounded to come in as they had thrown out their pickets beyond, and they were being hurt unnecessarily.  States was wounded, and was the first colored man taken prisoner.  The Confederate officers who took him from the men who secured him, placed states in charge of several soldiers, whose names the officer took, ordering them to keep him as a prisoner of war, and from being killed, which some of the men in the fort wished to do.  While in and about Wagner, he did not see the bodies of any of the Fifty-fourth officers killed in the charge.
     The next morning, that of July 19, the Fifty-fourth prisoners, numbering twenty-nine, hereinbefore named, and possibly others reported as missing, of whom no other record is found, were taken by their guards to the city of Charleston, where, upon their arrival, they were greeted by the jeers and taunts of the populace as they passed to the provost-marshal.  Then, after examination, the badly wounded were taken to a hospital common both to the white and colored sufferers.  Of it the "Charleston Courier" said, on July 23: -

     In view of the fact that our white prisoners exchanged on the next day reported that the /confederates neglected their wounds, that the surgeons were unskilful, and that unnecessary amputations were suffered, the above account is quoted.
     States says, that being wounded, he was taken to hospital, where the colored prisoners were somewhat separated from the whites, and received treatment last.  He was well treated by the surgeons, and was furnished with good food while there.  Continuing, he says that the colored prisoners, not wounded, were taken to castle Pinckney; and in this he is corroborated by Alfred Green of Company B, also a prisoner, who says that he was taken there, locked up in a room with his companions, and fed on mush.  These statements regarding the confinement of our unwounded in Castle Pinckney, immediately, are however contradicted by Assistant-Surgeon John T. Luck, U. S. Navy, and Chaplain H. C. Trumbull, Tenth Connecticut Infantry, who were both unjustifiably made prisoners on the morning of July 19, 1863, at orris Island, and were brought in contact with our men.
     Chaplain Trumbull says that he and Adjutant Camp of his  

     What was written on page 97 regarding Nelson Mitichell was gleaned largely from "Harper's Weekly" of April 8, 1865, from which the following extracts are also taken.  It is headed "A South Carolina Hero," and certainly will serve to bear the historian out in what was written,  As well as serving to give the reader another glimpse of the noble defender of the prosecuted negro soldiers.  After reciting that the information is derived from a private letter written in South Carolina, it says: -

     "There was a man in Charleston, Nelson Mitchell by name, who died about eight months ago, leaving, I believe, a wife and two children, poor and uncared for.  From the beginning he had reasoned with the people, and that openly about the matter.  Twice he was sentenced to be hung by a secret military court, but the authorities never could find a man to do the work.  [The article then goes on to say that he was the counsel for our men who were tried, and was successful in his efforts.  It continues]  To do this, you can imagine how fearlessly this brave soul must have worked.  An intelligent quadroon told me that he was present during the lat ten or twelve sessions, and that Mitchell's eloquence was perfectly startling.  He has never been publicly mentioned at Charleston since then, except in very doubtful terms.  They did not dare to touch him, he seemed to be so thoroughly in earnest; and he died from the effects of poverty and want.  Every night, before going to bed, Nelson Mitchell took his wife and children to his room, and having locked the door and shut the blinds, hung an American flag out over his mantel, and sat struck by one of our shells from Cummings Point, and his family thus left more destitute than before.  They are being well looked after now, and I don't think they will be allowed to suffer much hereafter.  For all this service he had the displeasure of the authorities, and the coldness of the people; but the way in which the negroes talk of him is very tender.

     It is disclosed by the correspondence of Bonham and Seddon that "the court, after hearing evidence and argument, decided that they had no jurisdiction of the case."  It does not appear that they were tried by any other court, Governor Bonham suspending action.  The correspondence referred to is as follows: -

GROVER, WILLIAM, Private, Co. E; captured Nov. 12, 1863, North Edisto, S. C.; died a prisoner in Feb. 1865, at Florence, S. C.

     Of the circumstances regarding his capture nothing has been found.  It is a singular fact that the date of Grover's capture is the same as that of Johnson and Logan, of the Fifty-fifth; and Botany Bay Island, where the latter were captured, forms one shore of the North Edisto, where the former is reported to have been made prisoner.
     Although the regiment was aware that many of the men were alive as prisoners, from reports of the enemy, the statements of deserters, contrabands, and other sources of information, the names of the survivors were not ascertained until, on Aug. 3, 1864, a list was received under circumstances set forth on page 218.  This list is probably the one which appears in the "New York Tribune" of Aug. 10, 1863, in connection with the following letters: -

COLORED SOLDIERS IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "NEW YORK TRIBUNE":

     SIR - While confined in Charleston Jail, S. C., in June last, as a prisoner-of-war, the following note was placed in my hands, and the accompanying list.  Massachusetts journals are requested to give them wide circulation.
 

     About the middle of July, 1864, the Confederates brought drafts of hundreds of Union officers, avowedly for the purpose of confining them under fire of the batteries before the city.  Many were placed in Charleston Jail and the surrounding yard, enclosed by the high brick wall.  There is frequent mention of the colored prisoners in the testimony given by some of these officers there confined, before the Congressional committee.
     Captain H. A. Coats, Eighty-fifth N. Y. Infantry, says that he was one of four hundred in the yard.  They had no blankets and

     "There were twenty-one negro soldiers, most of them belonging to Colonel Shaw's Fifty-fourth Mass. regiment of immortal memory, among the number.  They were never to be exchanged, but were to be reduced to slavery.  They were all that were left of the colored troops captured at Wagner.  The rest were bayoneted and shot after they surrendered.  Their rations were bread and water; still they would sing Union songs, pouring their melody through their prison bars for the entertainment of the Union officers in the prison and below.

     He says there was no shelter for these officers.  Filth, garbage, and urine were all about.  The gallows were still in the jail-yard.  Shells exploded about the jail.   On Sept. 16 there was a great bombardment, but only two were injured, and slightly.  No cooking utensils were provided.  A lot of lean beef was

     "One of the colored nurses (a soldier captured at Wagner) stopped to talk to me.  Todd saw him and ordered the guard to have him whipped.  Soon the screams of the poor fellow convinced me the order was being executed."

     In the "New York Times," of May 10, 1891, there appeared the following account of our men in Charleston Jail: -

     "On the third floor were confined a number of our colored soldiers who had been captured at Wagner and different points along the coast.  They were lean, dirty, and ragged; not a few had repaired their trousers and coats with pieces of canvas purloined from the tents in the yard, and the effect was very odd.  Our colored comrades were not only the 'innocent cause of the war,' but they were also the cause of the suspension of the cartel agreed to for the exchange of prisoners.  Yet I never heard a decent Union soldier say a word against them, and I can bear evidence to the fortitude with which they bore their privations, and their simple faith in the ultimate triumph of the Union cause.  Often after nine o'clock at night, when by the rules we were confined in our quarters, I have been aroused from a doze by the singing of the colored prisoners.  At such times the voices coming down from the upper floors of the jail sounded very sweet, and there was a certain weird, indescribable sadness in the minor key melodies, that told of camp-meeting days and the

     We are again indebted to Glazier's account for the following:

     "At the close of the day the negro prisoners made a practice of getting together in the jail, and singing their plaintive melodies till late in the evening.  The character of their songs was universally mournful, and it was often affecting to listen to them, - always embodying as they did those simple childlike emotions and sentiments for which the negro is so justly celebrated.  The harmony and the rich melody of their voices are rarely surpassed.       One song, which appeared to be a special favorite with them, was written by Sergeant Johnson, whom I have before mentioned.  He intended it as a parody on 'When the cruel war is over.'  I give this song as he furnished it to me.: -

I.

               CHORUS.

Weeping, sad and lonely,
   Oh, how bad I feel!
Down in Charleston, South Carolina,
   Praying for a good, square meal.
 

II.

[Page 418]

III.

               CHORUS.

Then we will laugh, long and loudly.
   Oh, how glad we 'll feel
When we arrive on Morris Island
   And eat a good square meal!
 

     "I was captured by Confederate cavalry, Nov. 12, 1863, and have been a prisoner-of-war ever since.  My treatment has been very humane considering the circumstances of the case.  The Confederate authorities show a disposition to release all free men, and as we come under that head, we hope a movement in that direction will be soon made.  About fifty of the colored troops are at the jail in Charleston.  They are not confined in cells, but volunteering to work they are permitted to go into the yard.  Most of the men have hardly enough clothing to cover them.  Their food consists of one pint of meal each day.  They receive nothing else form the Confederate authorities but this meal, and some of them say they never 

     It will be observed that the sergeant's statement of their treatment indicates less harshness towards them than has been gleaned from others' statements embodied herein.  This may be explained by the fact that the "Liberator," or rather the extract in our possession, does not give the source or means by which this letter was received, and if it came through the enemy's hands, subject to their scrutiny possibly its statements were tempered to pass the Confederate authorities.
     Bonham wrote that on Dec. 8, 1864, he had turned over the colored prisoners to General Jones.  On or about that date they were sent to Florence.  States says they were taken there about December 1,  Owing to the confinement of several hundred Confederate officers by us under fire on Cummings Point, Morris Island, the Confederates removed most of the Federal prisoners from the city of Charleston by the middle of October.  This we heard of Oct. 13 from a Federal officer who escaped from Charleston and reported, "Our prisoners, with the exception of the colored soldiers captured at Wagner, have been removed from Charleston."
     Florence Prison, Anderson County, South Carolina, was stockaded enclosure surrounded by a ditch, comprising about twenty-three acres, some two miles from the town of Florence..  Through the enclosure ran a stream of water the banks of which were bordered by a swamp.  From the upper point of this stream water for drinking was obtained; the lower part carried off the filth.  The prisoners had no other shelter than they themselves constructed, - generally little dirt huts partly built of wood, some covering holes in the ground.  No pots or pans were provided for cooking, which was done if at all by themselves.  A rough frame-work situated in the northwest corner, inside the stockade, served as a hospital.  For rations, generally about a pint of corn meal, a few spoonfuls of beans, and sometimes small pieces of beef wereprovided.  Salt was very scarce.  Strong guards

     "The camp we found full of what were once human beings, but who would scarcely now be recognized as such.  In an open field [this was just before the stockade was erected], with no inclosure but the living wall of sentinels who guard them day and night, are several thousand filthy, diseased, famished men, with no hope of release but death.  A few dirty rags stretched on poles give them a poor protection from the hot sun and heavy dews.  All were in rags, and barefooted, and crawling with

     During their stay at Florence the lot of our colored prisoners seems to have been that common to all confined there, in all its misery, despair, and wretchedness.  While there even their light-heartedness seems to have been subdued to the level of that of their white comrades; the upraising of their voices in song, if voice remained, would have been a mockery.  When the soul fled from their skeleton forms the colored men were laid away apart from their skeleton forms the colored men were laid away apart from the other dead.  During the winter the cold at times was intense, for ice formed and many prisoners were frost-bitten.  The prisoners, half naked, burrowed in their underground holes, and with broken health, despairing of release, bore as best they could the days and nights of torture and despair.  The thinned and sluggish blood, vitiated by disease, poisoned their whole systems.  Curvy, diarrhoea, and gangrene set in, the forerunner of death in many cases.  As at other prisons, their loyalty was tempted; and the hearts of the stanch and true were wrung by the sight of

     "From July 18, 1863, were in Charleston.  Were taken from there to Florence stockade about December, 1, 1864.  There were some fifty-four, and all went to Florence.  Were two months and nineteen days at Florence.  On March 4, 1865, the last lot were paroled; some had left before."

     The number of prisoners mentioned, "fifty-four," doubtless refers to all colored prisoners removed, and not Fifty-fourth men alone.  When he says that the last lot were paroled March 4, he probably means at the parole ground where they were at the time.  This we know to have been at Goldsboro, N. C.
     Alfred Green, of Co. B, also a Fifty-fourth prisoner, makes a more detailed statement of his experience and says, -

     We must depend upon other testimony than that of our own men regarding the Florence prisoners just before release.  Captain G. B. Adams, Nineteenth Mass. Infantry says, -

     "At Goldsboro I saw about fifteen hundred of our enlisted men, and they were in the worst possible condition.  They had been in the cars three days, and, in my opinion, not twenty-five of them were able to stand on their feet.  When they unloaded the cars three men were dead, and they threw them on the side of the railroad like so many dogs, I saw men of my company who did not recognize me, - they were idiotic.  Some had lost their sight completely, and were covered with vermin.  They could not possibly keep themselves clean, and men died from vermin.  This was in the month of February, and they had no shoes, and some had their feet badly frozen, so that blood flowed from them when they attempted to walk."

     Julius H. Marvin, Fifth Vermont Infantry, testifies, -

     "We were next taken to Wilmington and camped on the beach under guard, and were there issued a pint of raw meal, the first that we had to eat for three days.  When we left Wilmington some of our sick men were confined in a log hut, and the lieutenant in command, a one-armed man, ordered the shanty to be set on fire, and two men were unable to get out, and were burned to death.  From there we were taken about the country in various directions.  Some of the prisoners became moon blind, and the other prisoners were made to put a rope around their necks and draw them along.  Others that lagged behind were driven up by cavalry, who were ordered to shoot them if they did not come along.  We finally reached Goldsboro, N. C., and were confined in the woods.  It was wet and damp, and the prisoners made large fires to keep themselves warm and dry.  But the smoke made many blind.  I felt the effect of this ever since from it.  At Goldsboro, five thousand of us were paroled February 26, 1865."

     Official reports give the loss of the Fifty-fourth at the battle of Olustee, Fla., Feb. 20, 1864, as eight enlisted men missing, besides the killed and wounded.  The First North Carolina Infantry (afterwards the Thirty-fifth U. S. colored troops) and the Eighth U. S. colored troops were also engaged, and sustained losses in prisoners.
     The roster in this history names eight men as captured.  But in a list of Federal wounded prisoners, signed by J. S. Morrell, surgeon, C. S. A., dated at Lake City, Fla., Mar. 31, 1864, and copied in the "New York Herald" of Apr. 13, 1864, are found the names of Jason Champlin and William H. Morris of the Fifty-fourth, who in the roster are reported as missing.  These names are added, therefore, to the list, which is as follows: -

     But another account, in the "Charleston News" of July 21, 1884, written by Florida Saxon, of Clarendon Co., S. C., says that -

     "The public buildings [in Tallahassee] were converted into temporary hospitals for the prisoners.  The wounded negro prisoners were taken to the seminary.

     "It would seem as if the concentrated madness of earth and hell had found its final lodgment in the breasts of those who inaugurated the rebellion and controlled the policy of the Confederate government, and that the prison of Andersonville had been selected for the most terrible human sacrifice which the world had ever seen.  Into its narrow walls were crowded thirty-five thousand enlisted men, many of them the bravest and best, the most devoted and heroic of the grand armies which carried the flag of their country to final victory.  For long and weary months here they suffered, maddened, were murdered, and died.  Here they lingered unsheltered from the burning rays of a tropical sun by day, and drenching and deadly dews by night, in every stage of mental and physical disease, hungered, emaciated starving, maddened, festering with unhealed wounds; gnawed by the ravages of scurvy and gangrene, with swollen limbs and distorted fisage; covered with vermin which they had no power to extirpate; exposed to the flooding rains, which drove them drowning from the miserable holes in which, like swine, they burrowed; parched with thirst, mad with hunger; racked with pain or prostrated with the weakness of dissolution; with naked limbs and matted hair; filthy with smoke and mud, soiled with the very excrement from which their weakness would not permit them to escape; eaten by the gnawing worms which their own wounds had engendered; with no bed but the earth, no covering save the cloud or sky.  And these men, these heroes, born in the image of God, thus crouching and writhing in their terrible torture, a loathsome, horrible sight, the mutilated victims of a cool and calculating barbarity, stand forth in history as a monument of the surpassing horrors of Andersonville, as it shall be seen and read in all future time, realizing in the studied torments of their prison -house the ideal of Dante's Inferno and Milton's Hell."

     Warren Lee Goss, Sergt. 2d Mass. Heavy artillery, gave evidence regarding the colored prisoners to the committee, saying, -

     "Scarcely any of them but were victims of atrocious amputations performed by rebel surgeons.  It was said that none of the prisoners were captured except the wounded.  Thos in the prison were mostly New England men.  Some of them had been captured  at the battle of Olustee, Florida.  I observed in the negro prisoners a commendable trait of cleanliness.  Indeed, I may safely say their clothes were, on an average,

     The Major Bogle referred to by Goss was Archibald Bogle, major of the 1st North Carolina (colored); he was wounded and captured at Olustee.  He wounds were a slight one in the body and a very severe one in the right leg, which fractured both bones.  He says, -

     "On the 14th of March, 1864, I came to the stockade feeling very faint.  I heard there was a hospital inside the stockade, and I got some men to help me up there.  I was on crutches at the time.  I went in, and one of our own men who was acting hospital steward, commenced to bind up my leg, and was binding it when Surgeon White came in and  ordered him to desist, saying at the same time, 'Send him out there with his niggers;' or something to that effect, and using an oath at the same time.  I said nothing, but merely looked at him.  The hospital steward finished the dressing of my leg, and it was cared for by our men afterward.  I was in full uniform.  While I was there I demanded to have my rank recognized.  I made several demands.  I was used in every respect the same as private soldiers, only worse.  When I got to Millen an officer came to me and got my name, rank and regiment.  The officer commanding at Millen, Captain Bowles, put me in the stockade again and refused to put my name on the register, saying at the same time and I should never be exchanged.  I left Andersonville on the 18th of November, I believe."