A Light to My Path

by Lynn Austin

  “Me too, Delia. Me too.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Beaufort, South Carolina

  February 1863

  Excitement spread to every corner of the First South Carolina Volunteers’ camp. Grady could feel it—the expectancy of change in the air. Their training was nearly complete, and the real business of fighting was about to begin. Every man was busy polishing his rifle, shining his boots, and brushing his uniform to look his very best. Grady took extra care shaving and combing his hair, primping the way he used to do before going courting. The memory brought Delia to mind, and with it the ache of loneliness.

  He quickly drew a breath and exhaled, pushing the pain aside. Today was going to be an important day, not a sad one. Grady’s regiment of colored troops was marching into Beaufort in dress parade to be reviewed by General Saxton himself for the first time. A week ago Colonel Higginson had put them through their paces in preparation. At the end of the drill, he’d ordered them to hold up their right hands and pledge themselves to be faithful to those slaves who were still held in bondage. Grady had sworn by all that was in him to keep fighting until every last slave was free—or die trying.

  Yes, change was coming … he could tell. Today the men would prove to General Saxton that they were ready. Then the army would finally let them march and fight.

  Grady glanced around at the other dark, proud faces as they lined up, nearly a thousand soldiers in straight, even ranks. The color-sergeant, Prince Rivers, came forward to address the men before they marched. The former slave had been a coachman in Beaufort, like Grady, and they had met before the war. Now Sergeant Rivers stood before them, more than six feet tall, as noble and dignified as any white officer.

  “Listen, boys—” he began.

  “Call us men!” Grady shouted. Sergeant Rivers paused, glancing around to see who had spoken. “Excuse me, sir,” Grady said. “But call us men. And keep calling us that until we believe it.” He heard shouts of agreement all through the ranks. The sergeant smiled slightly and began again.

  “Listen, men … don’t be gawking all over the place when you march through town. Keep your eyes looking straight ahead of you. You’re gonna be marching past white soldiers and officers who ain’t never seen the likes of us before. They been drilling a whole month for every week that we have. Let’s show them what we can do … men.”

  There was a roar of approval and the drums began to pound. Grady’s heart thumped with the beat as they set off on the threemile march to Beaufort. The Eighth Maine Regimental Band stood waiting for them at the edge of town and led them down Bay Street with a brisk march. The blood-stirring music coursed through Grady’s veins like a rush of fire. He knew they looked extraordinary, every chin lifted with pride, every foot in perfect step. He risked a glimpse without turning his head and saw the white soldiers staring in amazement as the First South Carolina Volunteers marched through Beaufort in disciplined ranks. These were slaves—ignorant slaves—looking as fine as any white regiment ever looked.

  The troops reached the eastern edge of town, turned, and marched back through Beaufort once again. Grady knew they had done well, but it still wasn’t enough. He wanted a chance to prove he could fight, to earn the respect he deserved. They halted at the parade ground and drilled for an hour for the officers’ review. Then they marched back to camp singing John Brown’s song and dozens of others. Grady felt dizzy with exhilaration.

  “I’m proud of you, men,” Colonel Higginson announced before dismissing them. “I’m going to speak with General Hunter and tell him we’re ready to fight.”

  An enormous cheer followed his words. Grady lifted his fist high in the air and shouted until his throat ached. At last! The time had finally come for him to avenge his life of bondage. He would fight for his dignity, fight to reclaim what had long been denied him as a slave.

  * * *

  Four days later Grady stood onboard the John Adams, steaming down the Beaufort River on his regiment’s first mission. General Hunter had authorized an expedition along the Georgia coast into Confederate-held territory. Their orders were to confiscate cotton crops, to acquire much-needed lumber for the Union army, and best of all, to liberate slaves. Any able-bodied men they freed would be welcomed into their ranks as recruits.

  Grady stood near the rail as the ship reached the mouth of the Beaufort River and headed out into the open sea. It was the first time he’d been on a ship since his years of traveling up and down the Atlantic coast with Coop. The air was brisk up on deck, the salt spray cold on his face, the winter seas rough and choppy. But Grady didn’t want to go down below where Coop had always confined him. It was well worth the chill to experience this exhilarating sense of freedom.

  After an hour or so at sea, Corporal Robert Sutton came up on deck to stand alongside him. “How come you ain’t getting seasick like a lot of the other men?” he asked Grady. “You must have a strong stomach for the sea.”

  Grady liked the powerfully built corporal. The former slave loved to talk and could entertain the soldiers with his stories for hours.

  “I spent four years on the sea,” Grady replied. “Guess I got used to it.”

  “Was you working on a steamer or something?”

  “No … my massa was a slave trader.” Grady decided to bring the bad memories out into the open in hopes it would finally drive them away. He knew that Sutton wouldn’t insult him with misplaced pity. “Massa Coop had me sailing with him from Richmond to New Orleans and back again, trading slaves. Never got to stand out here, though. Most of the time I was down in the hold with all the other cargo.”

  “I’ll bet you seen more of the world than I ever did,” Sutton 303 said.

  “Yeah, I reckon so. How come you ain’t sick?”

  “Who says I ain’t?” Sutton chuckled and Grady laughed along with him. It felt good to laugh.

  “Where you from, Corporal?” Grady asked.

  “All the way down in Florida—right where we’re headed. Colonel Higginson asked me to pilot the boat up the St. Mary’s River for him, seeing as I know them waters so well. That’s the river dividing Florida from Georgia, you know. My old massa run a lumbering operation, so I told the colonel I know where there’s plenty of lumber. Told him it’s about time we went to work. I don’t believe in lying around camp eating rations.”

  “I know. Me neither,” Grady said with a smile. “How’d you manage to escape from your massa?”

  “I went down the river one night in a stolen dugout. I liked being free so much that I went back for my wife and child. Yes sir, I been up and down that river plenty of times. Gonna be a real pleasure steaming up there with all these guns, though.” Sutton gestured to one of the cannons mounted behind them.

  “You know a lot about ships?” Grady asked.

  “No, but I know that the one we’re on used to be a ferryboat up in Boston, until the army turned it into a gunboat. Now she’s armed with a thirty-pound Parrott gun, two ten-pounders, and an eight-inch howitzer. She’s ready for a fight, I’ll tell you. And so are the other two ships we’re sailing with—the colonel’s flagship, the Ben DeFord, and the Planter. You ever hear the story of the Planter?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, it’s a good one!” Sutton leaned against the rail, his face animated as he told Grady the story. “A slave from Beaufort named Robert Smalls captured that steamer right out from under the Rebels’ noses! He was a first-class pilot, you see. Knew all these waters like the back of his hand. So he ended up aboard the Planter, working for a Confederate captain named Relyea who was known for always wearing a beat-up straw hat. Well, last spring while they was stopping in Charleston, Smalls and six other slaves hid themselves on board, waited until three o’clock in the morning, then fired up the engines and cast off.

  “First they sailed upriver where their wives and children was waiting. Then they turned around and headed out to sea. It was real dangerous sailing past Fort Sumter, don’t you know. If they went to
o fast, the Rebels would figure something’s up—and sink her straight to the bottom. So Smalls put on Captain Relyea’s straw hat and stood on deck so the watchman up at the fort could see him. Smalls even knew which signal to give with the ship’s whistle.

  “Now, usually the Planter would be turning and heading for Morris Island once she was past the fort. Instead, Smalls opened her up and headed for the Union blockade fleet a few miles out. On the way, he took down the Rebel flag and raised a white one. Not only did Smalls and his men and their families all escape, but the Union got herself a fine ship, perfect for navigating these shallow coastal rivers.”

  Grady smiled when Sutton finished. He imagined Delia telling that story over and over to crowds of eager listeners. “You’re right, Corporal,” he said. “That’s a great story.”

  The journey to St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia proved uneventful. The John Adams soon lay anchored with several other naval vessels in the calm waters of St. Simons Sound, waiting for the slower-moving Planter to catch up. Grady felt restless and ready for action as he stood gazing at the distant beach and abandoned plantation houses. When Colonel Higginson began assembling a team to go ashore, he quickly volunteered.

  “The Rebels have abandoned all their forts on St. Simons Island,” the colonel explained, to Grady’s great disappointment. “But some of the men from our regiment were forced to help build those batteries while they were still slaves. They said that the Rebels used brand-new railroad iron to reinforce their magazines and bomb-proofs. Those iron bars would be worth their weight in gold to the Union if we could dig them out of the sand.”

  It wasn’t what Grady had imagined himself doing when he’d enlisted, but he figured anything was better than standing around on a ship all day. He boarded a large flatboat with the other men, and once ashore, the Georgia slaves easily guided them to the buried treasure. The sun beat down on the exposed beach, forcing Grady to shed his uniform jacket as he and the others shoveled through nearly twelve feet of sand. His fellow soldiers seemed to thoroughly enjoy this demolition work, and Grady couldn’t understand their laughter and high spirits. Weren’t they tired of such backbreaking tasks after all these years? Didn’t the fire of revenge burn as hotly in their souls as it did in his? What good was a gun if he couldn’t kill anyone with it?

  After unearthing nearly one hundred iron rails, the men set off across the island to forage for farm animals and to rescue any remaining slaves. Grady enjoyed rifling through the white folks’ plantations. He and his fellow slaves deserved a portion of the food and livestock they had labored to produce. And he loved seeing the expressions of joy on the former slaves’ faces when he offered them their freedom.

  The ships set sail the next morning, dropping off the freed slaves in the town of Fernandina, and reaching Fort Clinch at the mouth of the St. Mary’s River by late afternoon. “I’m assembling a corps of troops for another mission,” Colonel Higginson announced after dinner.

  Most of the men quickly volunteered, eager to join him. But Grady held back this time, waiting to hear what the mission entailed. He was willing to fight, but he would no longer break his back for the white men. When the colonel said, “We’ll be conducting a nighttime raid on a Rebel camp,” Grady caught his breath. This was it: the chance he’d waited for all his life.

  “Corporal Sutton is going to guide us up the St. Mary’s as far as Township Landing, fifteen miles upriver,” the colonel continued. “We’ll go ashore there and pay a surprise visit to Captain Clark’s Rebel cavalry, camped nearby. We’ll likely come under fire, so your courage will be tested for the first time. But it’s a chance to apply what we’ve learned in training camp.”

  So many men volunteered that there wasn’t room for them all on the two ships making the run. Grady was grateful for his good health when Colonel Higginson decided to winnow out all of the men who were coughing and might spoil a surprise attack. Grady’s tentmate, Joseph, was just recovering from a cold and was devastated at the thought of being left behind. Grady overheard him begging at the colonel’s feet.

  “Please let me come, sir! I’ll throw myself on the ground and scrape a little hole to cough into before I’ll ever make a sound! Please, sir!”

  Higginson smiled, evidently amused by Joseph’s zeal. He allowed him to come.

  They waited until after dark to begin the trip upriver so that the plume from the ship’s smokestack wouldn’t give them away. The colonel addressed the volunteers one last time before they cast off, offering anyone who wanted it a chance to change his mind.

  “The Rebels have heard all about our regiment,” he told them. “They’ve heard that we have freed slaves fighting against them now, and they’re all in an uproar about it. Before you volunteer for this mission, you need to know that the Rebels will show you no mercy. They won’t be taking any prisoners of war. If you’re captured, they’ll either shoot you outright or return you to slavery.”

  The news didn’t deter Grady in the least—or anyone else. He stood beside Joseph at the bow of the ship as the journey began, his rifle loaded, his body tensed and ready to kill. “I ain’t showing them no mercy, either,” he murmured. “The more white men I kill, the better I’ll feel.”

  Joseph turned to face him, studying him in the darkness. “Killing in battle is one thing. After all, we’re trying to win a war. But hating people … Hating ain’t good, Grady.”

  He remembered Delia trying to preach him the same sermon and it made him angry. “Why don’t you go talk to the white men, then? Seems like they’re hating us as much as I’m hating them.”

  “Not all of them hate us, and not all white men are bad. There’s good ones and bad ones, just like us colored folks.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve seen more than my fair share of bad ones,” Grady said. “I ain’t no worse than any of them.”

  “If you’re comparing yourself to other men, then you’re using the wrong measure. You need to be comparing yourself to God’s standard—”

  “Don’t preach to me,” Grady warned.

  Joseph paused for a long moment, then asked, “What about Colonel Higginson? And Captain Metcalf and Captain Trowbridge and all the other white officers?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are you hating them, too, just because their skin’s white?”

  Grady didn’t answer. The truth was that he avoided them as much as possible, wishing his race knew enough about warfare to go into battle without any white men. It was only because of the white man’s prejudice that Negroes had never studied to be army officers. And there was no doubt in his mind that with the proper training, a black man could be a four-star general.

  “Colonel Higginson and the others could be with a white regiment right now instead of with us,” Joseph continued. “But they’re volunteering to lead us—even though they’re all knowing that they won’t be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, either, if they’re captured. The truth is, the Rebels plan on killing the white officers right along with us.”

  Grady looked at Joseph for the first time. “Why would they do that? They’re white men.”

  “That’s their punishment for working with us. The Rebels are saying that any white officer they catch leading a troop of Negroes is gonna be treated just the same as a Negro and killed on the spot.”

  “Is that true?” Grady glanced up at the darkened pilothouse where Colonel Higginson stood in the shadows beside Corporal Sutton.

  “Yes, sir, I swear it’s true,” Joseph replied. “Not all white men are like our massas, you know. A good many of them are wanting to see us set free—and that includes Colonel Higginson and all the men who’re volunteering to lead us.”

  Grady still didn’t understand why they would do that. But he had a new respect for these white officers who willingly shared his race’s scorn and the Rebels’ hatred.

  “You know, Jesus done the same thing,” Joseph said softly. And for some reason Grady didn’t interrupt him or walk away. “Jesus was God’s Son. He neve
r had to live on earth or suffer and die. But He became a man, just like us. He took on our shame and sin and was willing to die for us.”

  His words sent a shiver of unease through Grady. “Why?” he asked.

  “Same reason,” Joseph said with a shrug. “He wanted to set us free.”

  Grady did walk away then, unwilling to allow any disquieting thoughts to disturb his plans for revenge. The moon shone dully off the swiftly flowing water as he stared into the darkness ahead. They rounded each bend in the river never knowing what lay ahead, heightening his sense of danger. He gazed up at the hills and meadows on shore and knew that he was heading deep into Rebel territory for the first time since his escape. He imagined thousands of Confederates waiting in ambush around the next bend in the river, and he felt alert, tense, and fully alive. Every light on the ship had been darkened, every voice whispered like the lapping of waves against the hull. He walked over to a group of soldiers standing beside one of the heavy guns.

  “They say the Rebels will let ships go upriver,” he heard one of them say, “but it’s a trap. They’ll build snags so they can attack us from their batteries on the way back.”

  “Yeah? Let them try it!” Grady said, his rage building again, along with his tension. “I’ve got plenty of ammunition.”

  The ships finally halted just below their destination of Township Landing, and Corporal Sutton went ashore with a small advance force. By the time Grady’s ship rounded the point and docked at the landing, Sutton’s men had silently surrounded the sleeping inhabitants’ homes.

  “Ain’t nobody running off to tell the Rebels we’re here, Colonel,” Sutton reported to Higginson with a proud grin. “We can take them by surprise. They’re camping about five miles from here, down a logging road through them woods.”