Watch Night

New Year’s Eve is often called “Watch Night,” a traditional service for many African-American churches...the most accepted "origin" of this tradition is linked to Dec. 31, 1862, as African-American families and churches celebrated "Freedom's Eve" and waited for word that Abraham Lincoln’s "so-called" Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect on Jan. 1, 1863.

But, the tradition of plantation slave gatherings on New Year’s Eve predates the Emancipation Proclamation.  Friends and family would gather (possibly for the last time) on New Year's Eve because New Year’s Day (early January) for many slaves in the South was known as “Heartbreak Day” or "Hiring Day"...a day when slaveholders sold slaves and other property in order to "balance their financial affairs" or to make money through the "hiring out" of excess slaves.

Big Times..."Winter Holidays in the Southern States"

In 1937, former slave Kisey McKimm and Beauregard Tenneyson described "Heartbreak Day"...

“The great day on the plantation, was Christmas, when we all got a little present from the Master...them kind of good times makes me think of Christmas. Didn’t have no Christmas tree, but they set up a long pine table in the house and that plank table was covered with presents and none of the Negroes was ever forgot on that day..Allow me to elaborate briefly on what Christmas meant for the African-American slave population in the South of America. Christmas could mean joy but often the air was filled concurrently by the fragrances of delicacies on the table and of the fear what the New Year would bring. Christmas was sometimes called “The Big Times”, but it ended for many of them with a “Heartbreak Day”.

Harriet Jacobs
1813-1897

Harriet Jacobs, writes in her famous book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” about "Hiring Day"...

“Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On the 2d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters...on New Year’s eve they gather together their little alls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings, and wait anxiously for the dawning of day. At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom pronounced...(The best master) is surrounded by a crowd, begging, “Please, massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa.” If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.”

"Were it not that hiring is near at hand, and many families are fearfully looking forward to the probability of separation in a few days, Christmas might be a happy season for the poor slaves... “Big Times” and a “Heartbreak Day” were separated by just a few days."
 

 

A former slave recalled how each New Year’s Day...

 

“the cries and tears of brothers, sisters, wives, and husbands were heard in the streets” as black families were separated – at least for twelve months, but possibly forever."

I wish you a Happy New Year!

Tonight remember...your family and friends...those who are serving our country...the homeless and oppressed...

Let us celebrate our freedom and resolve to kill more jellyfish in 2014.

Nuts!

Battle of Bastogne
December 20-27, 1944

The Siege of Bastogne (part of the larger Battle of the Bulge) was a battle from December 20-27, 1944 between Allied (23,000) and German forces (55,000) at the Belgian town of Bastogne...the Americans had been ordered to "hold Bastogne at all cost".

Cold...Hungry...Low on Ammunition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzYkxtQQo4 (1:16)

 Bastogne was a crossroads of seven main roads and it was critical to the control of the sea harbor of Antwerp. The Americans who were completely surrounded were given an ultimatum to surrender by the German commander...

Several Germans delivered the message to General Anthony McAuliffe. The General's first reaction was that the Germans wanted to surrender to us...when it was explained that the German's demanded our surrender General McAuliffe laughed and said:

"Us surrender? Aw, nuts!"

A short time later, General McAuliffe decided that a written response was in order.  He typed the following response:

To the German Commander, 

 

 "Nuts!"

 

The American Commander."

Upon receiving the note from Col. Joseph Harper, the German major asked, "Is the reply negative or affirmative? If it is the latter I will negotiate further."

Harper answered, "The reply is decidedly not affirmative... If you continue your foolish attack your losses will be tremendous."

Upon "releasing" the German officer Harper said...

"If you don't know what 'Nuts' means, in plain English it is the same as 'Go to Hell'. And I'll tell you something else, if you continue to attack we will kill every goddamn German that tries to break into this city."



Ed "Bazooka Man" Peniche
1925-2008

Listen to Eduardo Peniche's Bastogne memories (3:00 minutes)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnVPOOYMh1Q

 

 

Words Kill

Dr. Martin Luther King once commented on the history of Native Americans in the United States...

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.” 

Some primary source quotes about Native Americans from "Our Great White Fathers"...

George Washington- "Indians and wolves are both beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

Thomas Jefferson- “There is perhaps no method more irresistible of obtaining lands from them than by letting them get in debt, which when too heavy to be paid, they are always willing to lop off by a cession of land."

James Monroe- "The hunter or savage state requires a greater extent of territory to sustain it, than is compatible with the progress and just claims of civilized life, and must yield to it." 

Andrew Jackson- "They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear."

California Governor Peter Burnett- "A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected."

Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution (38 Dakota Indians) in Mankato, Minnesota.

Major General John Pope-  "It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so… They are to be treated as maniacs and wild beasts."

Theodore Roosevelt- "an alien race with a coveted prize (land) in their feeble grasp."

Woodrow Wilson- "the purposes and motives of this great government and of our nation as a whole towards the red men have been wise, just, and beneficent. The remarkable progress of our Indian brothers towards civilization is proof of it and open for all to see.

John Wayne- "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

John F. Kennedy- "Our treatment of Indians...still affects the national consciousness.... It seems a basic requirement to study the history of Indian people. Only through this study can we as a nation do what must be done if our treatment of the American Indian is not to be marked down for all time as a national disgrace.

Ronald Reagan- "Let me tell you just a little something about the American Indian in our land. We have provided millions of acres of land for what are called preservations - or reservations, I should say. They, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life, as they had always lived there in the desert and the plains and so forth. And we set up these reservations so they could, and have a Bureau of Indian Affairs to help take care of them. At the same time, we provide education for them - schools on the reservations. And they're free also to leave the reservations and be American citizens among the rest of us, and many do. Some still prefer, however, that way - that early way of life. And we've done everything we can to meet their demands as to how they want to live. Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us."

The American Holocaust



 In 1976, Pulitzer prize-winning author and WWII historian John Toland wrote:

 

“Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”

 

Over the past 237 years, the United States government has had some very interesting names for it's Indian "Civilization" Policy...Indian Removal, Liquidation, Extermination, Assimilation, Friends of the Indian, Reorganization, Self-Determination, Reservations...(not to mention the hundreds of broken treaties) were/ are "policies" that amount to nothing less than an American Holocaust. 

It was/ is not only a genocide...it was/ is multiple genocides of hundreds of Nations, millions of Native Americans, hundreds of distinct cultures, languages, and tribal identities, the confiscation of billions of acres of land, etc.

Some (idiots) would say that we need to move on...the ends justify the means...ultimately good and progress came from this bad...that was a long time ago...why should I care...

One social commentator said that...

"anyone who didn't celebrate the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister." People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America's past are simply reactionary and that...

 

"atrocities happen to be the way history is made"

 

 and "to complain about[atrocities] is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological, or tectonic shift"....such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind - as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans - the American Indians - has brought about a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation."
 

 

I choose not to forget or sugarcoat the atrocities of yesterday and today. Will we ever get serious and begin to repair the wreckage of Westward Expansion and the tragic neglect of today's "invisible man"?  When will we be able to say that love, respect, justice, and mercy happen to be the way history is made?!?

 

"Let us put our minds together and
 see what life we can make for our children."
                                         -Sitting Bull

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sittingbul172388.html#YhIP08wJ3jfRKy7o.99

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sittingbul172388.html#YhIP08wJ3jfRKy7o.99

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sittingbul172388.html#YhIP08wJ3jfRKy7o.99

Nelson Mandela: Free

Nelson "Rolihlahla" Mandela
1918-2013

As I taught my classes today, my heart was at half staff as I grieved the loss and quietly celebrated the life of one of my heroes...Nelson Mandela. 




Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
1825-1911

While struggling in my head and heart to find the words to say...a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (famous abolitionist and poet) echoed in my ear.  I submit  "Bury Me In A Free Land" as a "tribute in poem" to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Following is an excerpt of this moving poem...

Bury Me in A Free Land

 

Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.

I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves. 

 

"Mr. Mandela, sleep well in a free land!"

     

"We Do Not Ride On The Railraod..."

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote...

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”

He used this paradoxical phrase to symbolize the "progress of  technology" (telegraph and the railroad) as a negative that was ruining the environment and America's quality of life...not to mention the millions of buffalo and Native Americans that were exterminated for "progress" aka Manifest Destiny.

Clearly, Thoreau is implying that technology is something that can deceptively and easily control people. Do you ever find yourself spending too much time on the computer, text messaging, watching television, playing video games, cruising YouTube, listening to your iPod, maintaining a blog (ouch that hurt)...are we riding technology or is it riding us?!?

What a great reminder that we probably consider technology much more important than it really is. Let's take time this week to unplug from our busy and distracted lives and enjoy the simpler things...a meaningful conversation with a friend or family member, the beauty of nature, the intrigue of a good book, the joy of helping others, a quiet walk, telling someone how much you love them, watching the sun set, etc. 

"SIMPLIFY!"

 

Lady Freedom and Langston Hughes




December 2, 1863

Today is the 150th Anniversary of the crowning of the Capitol Dome with Freedom.  She is a colossal bronze figure (designed by Thomas Crawford) standing 19½-feet tall, weighing approximately 15,000 pounds and standing 288 feet above Washington, D.C.  Freedom holds a sheathed sword in her right hand, while a laurel wreath and the shield of the United States are held in her left hand. 

1855 Phrygian Cap Design

 

Ironically in 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later to become POTCSA) was in charge of the Capitol construction project and Crawford's original design was adorned with a Phrygian Cap...an ancient Roman symbol for an emancipated slave!  This seemed to be a direct insult to slaveholders and Davis erupted with anger (so much hypocrisy/ irony here) against this Northern assault to the "Southern Way of Life":

 “Its (Phrygian Cap) history renders it inappropriate to a people

who were born free and would not be enslaved”.

The original design was changed and the final version of Freedom wearing a military helmet with stars, an eagle's head and crest of feathers was placed atop the dome as the Civil War raged!

She gracefully stands on a cast-iron globe inscribed with the words:

E PLURIBUS UNUM

 

 

 

The freedom that seemed so close in 1863 and so far away in 1963...is still a freedom worth striving for...for many.

 

 

 

This poem (1965) about a "telescope of dreams" by Langston Hughes is a powerful metaphor to remind us that freedom is not merely the casting off of chains...it is also killing jellyfish...

 

 

Long View: Negro

 

Emancipation: 1865

 

Sighted through the

 

Telescope of dreams

 

Looms larger,

 

So much larger,

 

 

So it seems,

 

 

Than truth can be.

 

 

But turn the telescope around,

 

Look through the larger end-

 

And wonder why

 

 

What was so large

 

 

Becomes so small

 

Again.

 

 

 

 

A "Kill The Jellyfish" Thanksgiving

Today, as I celebrate Thanksgiving (and a day off from school) with family and friends I am thinking of the many blessings I have to be thankful for...family, friends, employment, my students, etc. and even football!

I am also thankful for living in America (not necessarily for what she has been) and what she is becoming! Our country still has many problems...but, we are young, strong, and determined to overcome.  Let's take an interest in making our country better, caring for our neighbor, and help ordinary people (like ourselves) to strive toward "All Men Are Created Equal"...so that we can become everything we were meant to be.

Listen to "Let America Be America Again (4:49)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqeywXhKfY

Independence Day?

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages..."
                                                                                       -Frederick Douglass

Recently in class, I asked my students when they thought the United States began to truly live out the principle of "All Men Are Created Equal".  The Theoretical Nation vs. Real Nation question.

Was it...
July 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence
April 12, 1861: Ft. Sumter
January 1, 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation
April 9, 1865: Appomattox
February 3, 1870: 15th Amendment Ratified
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education
Sept. 24, 1957: Federal Troops "Occupy" Little Rock
July 2, 1964: The Civil Rights Act
???????????: ????????????

Maybe a couple of questions will help you determine what our "Independence Day" should be...

What determines freedom in America today?

Citizenship...Land Ownership...Voting...Employment...High Quality Education...

Are we free?

Racial Profiling...Police Brutality...Stop and Frisk..."Low Expectation" Schools...Massive Government Programs...Anti-Immigrant Hatred...

My vote for "Independence Day"...November 11, 1918.  Yes, this is Armistice Day...the day we celebrate the end of WWI..."The War To End All Wars!"  It is also our modern day Veterans Day...I suggest it is the perfect day to celebrate veterans, freedom,  and annually declare war on racism in America! 

W.E.B. DuBois' "Returning Soldier" Essay

 

But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.
It lynches.
And lynching is barbarism of a degree of contemptible nastiness unparalleled in human history. Yet for fifty years we have lynched two Negroes a week, and we have kept this up right through the war.
It disfranchises its own citizens.
Disfranchisement (denying the vote) is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white. The land that disfranchises its citizens and calls itself a democracy lies and knows it lies.
It encourages ignorance.
It has never really tried to educate the Negro. A dominant minority does not want Negroes educated. It wants servants, dogs, whores and monkeys. And when this land allows a reactionary group by its stolen political power to force as many black folk into these categories as it possibly can, it cries in contemptible hypocrisy: "They threaten us with degeneracy; they cannot be educated.
It steals from us.
It organizes industry to cheat us. It cheats us out of our land; it cheats us out of our labor. It confiscates our savings. It reduces our wages. It raises our rent. It steals our profit. It taxes us without representation. It keeps us consistently and universally poor, and then feeds us on charity and derides our poverty.
It insults us.
It has organized a nation-wide and latterly a world-wide propaganda of deliberate and continuous insult and defamation of black blood wherever found. It decrees that it shall not be possible in travel nor residence, work nor play, education nor instruction for a black man to exist without tacit or open acknowledgment of his inferiority to the dirtiest white dog. And it looks upon any attempt to question or even discuss this dogma as arrogance, unwarranted assumption and treason.This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought! But it is our fatherland. It was right for us to fight. The faults of our country are our faults. Under similar circumstances, we would fight again. But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.
We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.
Make way for Democracy!
We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.

 

40 Acres and A Mule: Anonymous Strength

Last week in class we discussed the Black Codes (1865-1866) and their relation to money, political power, culture/ religion, emotions, and isms.  It became clear to our classes that this system (Black Codes/ Jim Crow) truly was "slavery without chains" and that as many believed it was "worse than slavery".

Possibly the worst pledge of freedom was Special Field Order No. 15 aka the "40 Acres and a Mule" promise.  On the Sea Islands of Georgia, the Freedmen were farming, starting schools, and building free settlements under the direction of Tunis Campbell.  But, the old masters were determined to get their land back and were granted their petition by POTUS Andrew Johnson.  Johnson forced General Oliver O. Howard (using African-American troops) to confiscate the lands and return them to the Rebels...General Howard:

I'd endeavored to explain the wishes of the President, and with one voice they cried,

"NO! NO!" 

 In the noise and confusion, a sweet-voiced Negro woman began the hymn,

"Nobody knows the trouble I feel...nobody knows but Jesus..."

 

 

The remarkable, anonymous, and unwavering strength of millions to persevere, fight, and survive against racist betrayal...hostility...violence...indifference...empty words, etc. is inexplicable.  Why and how could they continue to work, sing, pray, love, build families, etc.?

 

 

My best answer...their belief in God, each other, and us. They were fighting for a future they knew they might not ever see...a future where "All Men Are Created Equal" are not just empty words on a piece of paper!  

 

 

"We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country...We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go on with this people (white people), either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations. We are clearly on their hands."

 

                                                                             -Frederick Douglass

 

 

A Useless War?

 

"Compromise with the South" Cartoon Interpretation

The Stars and Stripes hanging upside down as a sign of distress...while the Stars and Bars is frayed, but flies triumphantly upright.  The background portrays a Northern city and home on fire, a dead Union soldier, and an African-American Union soldier with his family returned to chains.  The foreground portrays a Union soldier amputee, with his head bowed and hat in his hand. He shakes a Confederate soldier’s hand (resembling Jefferson Davis) clearly defeated.  "Davis" stands proud and rests his foot on a Union grave while breaking a Union sword.  A weeping Lady Columbia sadly kneels beside the soldier at the foot of a grave...The tombstone reads,

 

“In Memory of the Union Heroes...in a Useless War.”

 

This Thomas Nast cartoon (September 3, 1864) was intended to criticize Northern politicians, newspaper editors, and families who were calling for an end to the Civil War.  They were calling for a cease fire, a negotiated compromise, and a return to the "United States"...the war, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the attempt to advance civil rights was a failure.  Nast's message is very clear: compromise with the South would be a Confederate victory.

 

 

 

I would suggest that Nast's cartoon is also a poignant foreshadowing of the ultimate Southern victories of the Reconstruction Era... "White Rule" returned to the South (Democrat/ KKK mob rule) and a reinvention of "slavery without chains" (sharecropping/ debt peonage/ lynching, etc.). 

 

Had the Civil War really been fought in vain?!?

 

Yankee and Rebel soldiers celebrate "The Noble Cause"
Gettysburg July 1913

"How stands the case with the recently emancipated millions of colored people in our own country? What is their condition today?...By law, by the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the constitution, the Negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family, residing in the United States....Yet, the old master class was not deprived of the power of life and death, which was the soul of the relation of master and slave. They could not, of course, sell their former slaves, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held there is the power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow- man, "You shall serve me or starve," is a master and his subject is a slave..."

 

                                                       -Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1892 or 2013?)

 

 

Veteran's Night

I am so thankful that America celebrates Veterans Day (although we do not have a Veterans Day Assembly at the school where I teach) and thanks Veterans for the many sacrifices they have made to make our freedom possible. THANK YOU VETERANS!



 



But, tonight (currently 15 degrees in Minneapolis) I am reminded that between 130,000 and 200,000 veterans are homeless in America...and this outrages me!  Maybe we should have a Veterans Night to bring awareness to the plight of thousands of veterans.

 

Some statistics on homeless veterans:

 

23% of homeless population are veterans
33% of male homeless population are veterans

67% served three or more years
33% were stationed in a war zone
76% experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems
46% are age 45 or older

 

 

When will we take serious action to address the underlying causes of homelessness and begin to eliminate this tragedy that plagues our nation?  Veterans...stay safe...stay strong...stay warm...stay proud...

 

 

"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?"

                                             - George Canning

 



 

 

 

John Brown: The First To Die

First South Carolina (Union) Volunteers

One of my students asked me this week if I knew who was the first African-American soldier to die in the Civil War.  Contrary to popular wisdom, the 54th Massachusetts were not the first African-American troops involved in the Civil War...

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The following primary source documentation comes from the daily log of  Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson entitled "Army Life in a Black Regiment"...

It is "well known" that the first attempt (duty) to recruit a Black Regiment was given to Charles T. Trowbridge of New York beginning in May of 1862.  The regiment trained on Hilton Head Island, S.C. until the beginning of August, 1862 and was sent to garrison (equip and protect) St. Simon's Island, on the coast of Georgia.

There were Rebel forces on the island and the First S.C. Volunteers were asked to pursue them.  When they arrived at St. Simon's they learned that the Freedmen (African-Americans) of the island had already attacked the Rebels. 

Twenty-five of them had armed themselves, under the command of one of their own number, whose name was John Brown. The second in command was Edward Gould, who was afterwards a corporal in my own regiment. The rebel party retreated before these men, and drew them into a swamp. There was but one path, and the negroes entered single file. The rebels lay behind a great log, and fired upon them. John Brown, the leader, fell dead within six feet of the log,---probably the first black man who fell under arms in the war,---several others were wounded, and the band of raw recruits retreated; as did also the rebels, in the opposite direction. This was the first armed encounter, so far as I know, between the rebels and their former slaves; and it is worth noticing that the attempt was a spontaneous thing, and not accompanied by any white man. The men were not soldiers, nor in uniform, though some of them afterwards enlisted in Trowbridge's company.

 
I never knew till today that "John Brown," was the first negro soldier who fell in this war. He was shot in a skirmish on St. Simon's Island, August 8, 1862. A singular coincidence of names. No wonder our soldiers think him the hero of the John Brown hymn!

"When I strike the bees will begin to swarm!"