Readville, Feb. 15, '63.
My Dear Henry,
— I wrote you last a most “quaintly moral” letter. . . . I think public opinion here is getting
stouter, more efforts are making to educate the great unthinking. Good
editorials are reprinted and circulated gratis.1 A club is now
forming in Boston, a Union Club, to support the Government, irrespective
of party, started by Ward, Forbes, Norton, Amos Lawrence, etc., etc. This seems
to me a very promising scheme. Clubs have in all trying times been great levers
for moving events along. A similar club has already been started in
Philadelphia under equally good auspices.
Our black regiment is likely to provoke discussion also, and
in that way, if no other, to do good. Bob Shaw comes as Colonel, to arrive
to-morrow, and Pen Hallowell as Lieutenant-Colonel (been here some days).2
I have no idea that they can get a full regiment in New England, but think they
can get enough intelligent fellows here to make a cadre for one or more
regiments to be raised down South. I do not know how much you may have thought
upon the subject, and I may send you a few slips to show you how we feel.
I am very much interested without being at all sanguine. I think
it very good of Shaw (who is not at all a fanatic) to undertake the thing. The
Governor will select, or let Shaw select, the best white officers he can find,
letting it be understood that black men may be commissioned as soon as
any are found who are superior to white officers who offer. The recruiting will
be in good hands. In the Committee of consultation are Forbes and Lawrence;2
in New York, Frank Shaw; in Philadelphia, Hallowell's brother. You see this is
likely to be a success, if any black regiment can be a success. If it fails, we
shall all feel that tout notre possible has been done. If it fails, it
will at least sink from under our feet the lurking notion that we need not be
in a hurry about doing our prettiest, because we can always fall back upon the
slaves, if the worst comes to the worst. You remember last September, upon
somewhat the same ground, we agreed in approving the Proclamation, however
ill-timed and idle it seemed to us. We shall knuckle down to our work the
sooner for it. My first battalion (five companies, 325 strong) leave on
Thursday for Fort Monroe. The battalion from California will be here in March.
We have only about 175 more men to get here to reach a minimum. Now that
Stoneman is Chief of Cavalry, I think I can get where I want to, so you
can see me before the end of the summer.
_______________
1 The New England Loyal Publication Society had
this origin: —
Mr. John M. Forbes kept an eye on the
newspapers or other publications, irrespective of party, for any strong and
sensible paragraph, speech, or article advocating a vigorous prosecution of the
war. In the midst of all his important public and private works, he had these
copied and multiplied and sent, at his expense, all over the country,
especially to local newspapers. When the work became too serious an undertaking
for one man, he formed the society, which became an important and efficient
agency, during the last three years of the war, for the spreading of sound
doctrines in politics and finance. Party and personal issues were excluded. Mr.
Charles Eliot Norton took charge of the work as editor, and James B. Thayer,
Esq., was the secretary. The Executive Committee were J. M. Forbes, President;
William Endicott, Treasurer; C. E. Norton, J. B. Thayer, Edward Atkinson,
Martin Brimmer, Rev. E. E. Hale, Henry B. Rogers, Professor W. B. Rogers,
Samuel G. Ward.
2 Readville, near Boston, was then the principal
camp of assembly and instruction, and the Second Massachusetts Cavalry and the
Fifty-Fourth Infantry were camped side by side. The latter was the first
coloured regiment that went to the war from New England. It was regarded as a
dangerous and doubtful experiment, — by some persons as a wicked one. Part of
the men were obtained in Massachusetts, but a great number of them from Ohio,
Kentucky, and Tennessee, by the energy and patriotism of Major George L.
Stearns. Braving much hostile public opinion and ridicule, the field officers
of the regiment, and many of the line, left white regiments to make the Fifty-Fourth
a success.
The Colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, had served with credit in
the Second Massachusetts Infantry; the Lieutenant-Colonel, Norwood Penrose
Hallowell, a gallant fighter of Quaker stock, had already served in the
Twentieth regiment, and later became Colonel of the Fifty-Fifth, while his
brother Edward succeeded him as Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fifty-Fourth.
Major Higginson in his address, at the dedication of the
Soldiers' Field, said of Robert Shaw: —
“I first saw him one evening in our first
camp at Brook Farm — a beautiful, sunny-haired, blue-eyed boy, gay and droll
and winning in his ways. In those early days of camp life, we fellows were a
bit homesick, and longed for the company of girls . . . and I fell in love with
this boy, and have not fallen out yet. He was of a very simple and manly nature
— steadfast and affectionate, human to the last degree, without much ambition,
except to do his plain duty. You should have seen Robert Shaw as he, with his
chosen officers, led away from Boston his black men of the Fifty-Fourth
Massachusetts amid the cheers of his townsmen. Presently he took them up to the
assault of Fort Wagner, and was buried with them there in the trench.”
3 Of the summer of 1862, Mr. Forbes wrote in his
notes: —
“In that summer I had the satisfaction
of getting up the Committee of a Hundred for promoting the use of blacks as
soldiers, and acted as chairman of it.
“We raised, I think, about $100,000
by subscription among the most conservative Republicans. . . . I was able to do something towards the
choice of the right officers, as well as in raising the men.”
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 234-6, 414-5
