BEAUFORT, S. C. November 24.
Today our companies E and K have proved themselves worthy, in a skirmish over the river, of all the praises that have been showered upon them. The facts which I am not strong enough to write out, will appear in the Northern journals. Fancy the rebel cavalry sending their pack of blood-hounds in advance and our men receiving them on their bayonets and then repulsing the cavalry with buck and ball. Two of our men drowned, several wounded.
A cheerful letter from our Chaplain, dated Columbia Jail, S.
C. October 23rd. He was treated the same as other officers, and we infer that
our colored soldiers were not subjected to any peculiar hardships. Of course he
was not permitted to criticize. We will give him a big reception if ever he
comes back to the regiment.1
1 "In spite of an agreement at Washington to the contrary, our chaplain was held as prisoner of war, the only spiritual adviser in uniform, so far as I know, who had that honor."
—Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 231.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June, 1910: February 1910. p. 396
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