Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by Ticknor andFields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes movedto the end of the article. Table of contents created for the HTML version.
LEAVES FROM AN OFFICER'S JOURNAL.
RICHES.
THE VENGEANCE OF DOMINIC DE GOURGUES.
LINA.
CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.
TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS
THE NEW SCHOOL OF BIOGRAPHY.
THE LAST RALLY.
FINANCES OF THE REVOLUTION.
THROUGH-TICKETS TO SAN FRANCISCO: A PROPHECY.
SEA-HOURS WITH A DYSPEPTIC.
THE TWENTIETH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
[I wish to record, as truthfully as I may, the beginnings of a momentousexperiment, which, by proving the aptitude of the freed slaves formilitary drill and discipline, their ardent loyalty, their courage underfire, and their self-control in success, contributed somewhat towardssolving the problem of the war, and towards remoulding the destinies oftwo races on this continent.
During a civil war events succeed each other so rapidly that theseearlier incidents are long since overshadowed. The colored soldiery arenow numbered no longer by hundreds, but by tens of thousands. Yet therewas a period when the whole enterprise seemed the most daring ofinnovations, and during those months the demeanor of this particularregiment, the First South Carolina, was watched with microscopicscrutiny by friends and foes. Its officers had reason to know this,since the slightest camp-incidents sometimes came back to them,magnified and distorted, in anxious letters of inquiry from remote partsof the Union. It was no pleasant thing to live in this glare ofcriticism; but it guarantied the honesty of any success, while fearfullymultiplying the penalties, had there been a failure. A single mutiny, asingle rout, a stampede of desertions,—and there perhaps might not havebeen, within this century, another systematic effort to arm the negro.
It is possible, therefore, that some extracts from a diary kept duringthat period may still have an interest; for there is nothing in humanhistory so momentous as the transit of a race from chattel-slavery toarmed freedom; nor can this change be photogr