Hilton Head, S.C., August 10, 1862
Affairs here are as dull as dull can be. We have had a little excitement about your old friend the Fingal, which has turned up in Savannah harbor as an ironclad of much force, but that seems to be dying out now, though I can’t help thinking that we shall some day hear from her when we least expect or desire to.
General Hunter’s negro regiment was disbanded yesterday and now they have all dispersed to their old homes. Its breaking up was hailed here with great joy, for our troops have become more anti-negro than I could have imagined. But, for myself, I could not help feeling a strong regret at seeing the red-legged darkies march off; for, though I have long known that the experiment was a failure, yet it was the failure of another effort at the education of these poor people and it was the acknowledgment of another of those blunders which have distinguished all and every our experiments on slavery throughout this war. When did an educated people ever bungle so in the management of a great issue! I feel sick and almost discouraged at what I see and hear. What God made plain we have mixed up into inextricable confusion. We have had declarations of emancipation ingeniously framed so as not to free a slave and yet to thoroughly concentrate and inflame our enemy. We have wrangled over arming the slaves before the slaves showed any disposition to use the arms, and when we have never had in our lives 5000 of them who could bear arms. Why could not fanatics be silent and let Providence work for awhile. The slaves would have moved when the day came and could have been made useful in a thousand ways. As it is, we are Hamlet’s ape, who broke his neck to try conclusions….
