Army Life in a Black Regiment

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, was a fervent member of New England's abolitionist movement, an active participant in the Underground Railroad, and not only corresponded with John Brown before the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, but was part of a group that supplied material aid to Brown. When the Civil War broke out, his reputation, enhanced by his impassioned articles about Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner in the Atlantic, made him the perfect candidate to head the first regiment of emancipated slaves, and in 1862, he was commissioned as a colonel for the troops training in the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas. Army Life in a Black Regiment is Higginson's stirring account of his wartime experiences. Shaped by American Romanticism and imbued with Higginson's interest in both man and nature, the narrative ranges from detailed reports on daily life to a vivid description of the author's near escape from cannon fire to sketches that conjure up the beauty and mystery of the Sea Islands.