reached its destination. For in the interval which it took to travel from Stafford Court House to New York, he reviewed his reasons and reversed his decision. "Please destroy my letter, and telegraph the Governor that I accept," was his laconic message.

But

Shaw was now well across the Rubicon of his doubt and indetermination. From the instant that his feet pressed its farther shore, all uncertainty and indecision vanished. He became resolute, confident, a self-reliant leader of men in pursuit of a definite and dangerous purpose. The die of his fortune, life, honor, he now cast with the Fifty-fourth, and with its success or failure he would thereafter sink or swim. Glory, the cause of liberty and of the Union, buoyed him, braced all the powers, summoned all the faith and enthusiasm of the heroic heart. He was as one under an irrevocable vow. To its accomplishment the stern prejudice and circumstances of the times isolated and devoted him. his own ardent patriotism and philanthropy isolated and devoted him quite as much. At Readville he drilled with unflagging attention his raw recruits. He breathed into them his own radiant passion for excellence and success. Much more than drill-master he proved to the regiment. He was vigilant husbandman to the good seed dormant in the souls of men long despised and proscribed by public law and public opinion. By the unfailing gravitation of character and example, he drew the manhood of his men to high levels of action. As he disciplined into order their bodies, so he drilled into expression their selfrespect. The enthusiasm and the example were quickly rewarded. Surprised and delighted he was with the earnestness and docility of the troops. At the end of five weeks he was able to write that they acquired "all the details of guard duty and camp service infinitely more readily" than most of his former command. Sceptics went, saw, and left at the encampment their sneer and their scepticism. The United States mustering officer, a Virginian by birth, and a scoffer at the capacity of the negroes to make soldiers, surrendered unconditionally on witnessing the martial bearing and skilful evolutions of the regiment. He confessed to their young colonel that he had never mustered into the service better men.

May 28, 1863, the Fifty-fourth entered Boston on its way to the seat of war in South Carolina. The spectacle of colored troops in the city which had mobbed Garrison and sent back fugitives to slavery seemed stranger than fiction. The historic pageant is worth recalling, for it was brimful of tragic beauty and pathos. Nobly picturesque was the fair skin and Saxon hair of the commander against the dark background of a thousand dusky faces. They marched through streets thronged with people, under windows and balconies crowded with the grace, the wealth, and genius of the old town. Boston had "conquered her prejudices," though not exactly as Webster had demanded a dozen years before from the steps of the Revere House. From the balcony of Wendell Phillips's home on Essex Street a cast of John Brown stared down on this startling fulfilment of his vision in 1859. Close beside the bust stood the intrepid editor of the Liberator. One hand of the lion-hearted apostle of non-resistance rested—was it in sign of public confession and reconciliation? — on the grand head of the fiery believer in blood and iron. Above the Fifty-fourth the extremes of freedom met, and the spirits of Garrison and Brown embraced and kissed each other. The ghost of the glorious martyr was abroad that May day; and as if suddenly rendered sensible of his presence, the regimental band struck up the tune and the men sang his song, while walking over the spot where Attucks fell, and in the track of Burns and Sims, their stern, multitudinous voices rising and falling, swelling and pealing, with the choral harmony and exultation of "His soul is marching on." Such a rendition, thirteen year after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, of a black regiment with banners and bayonets, never entered the brain of the authors of the Compromise measures of 1850. It was a nation's Astræa returning from the skies.

for the sake of a great cause. He had now nothing more of self, except life, to offer. Family and home, old comrades and companions in arms, then his fair young wife, he resigned for country and the freedom of the slave. Marvellously much he had, marvellously much he gave. The magnitude of his duty grew upon him -filled him with its commanding SHALL and MUST. Such imperious mastery did it organize over his desires, that he questioned at times whether he should so much as look forward to a home for himself and bride. Not until he had done this duty, demonstrated that the blacks had the stuff of soldiers in them, would he taste the delights of domestic life. They had triumphed over their enemies at the North; he did not doubt that they would triumph also over their enemies at the South. The supreme test of battle he was confident would convert his faith into fact. He talked and wrote of it, and longed for it. The stern prayer for battle was ever on his lips and in his letters. It received a partial answer July 16, 1863, on James Island in Charleston Harbor, when a strong detachment of rebels fell suddenly on two hundred of the Fifty-fourth. They did. They did not show their backs, but their faces, to the foe, resisting the onset with the greatest bravery. Seven of their number sealed with their lives the bloody testament that valor knows no race and rises from all conditions of freedom and servitude. The action evoked the approval of the general and the applause of the brigade. These men had certainly shown "to somebody besides their officers, what stuff they were made of." This was indeed a triumph, but it was not enough for their leader. Some enterprise, more difficult and perilous, he hoped would come to him and them, and that it would come soon. Ah! it did come to him and his regiment, and it came soon. The memorable attack on Fort Wagner two days after the conspicuous beginning on James Island satisfied forever his longing.

Those intervening days were fraught with trial for the regiment. The heat of Charleston is in itself no mean enemy to fight. From its sultry throat issue fevers, sunstrokes, death. The country there is fervid as a kiln. The sand in the streets and on the roads and beaches reaches the temperature of lava, is so hot indeed that

were eggs buried in it they would bake to a turn. There is no withstanding such a foe; and the natives, those who can, hie to places of refuge under roofs, to the shadow of trees and vine-clad verandas, to any spot of grateful gloom, where the burning rays cannot find them. But when the blaze is at length extinguished within this fiery furnace, night lets down over the pores and vents of land and sea her thick blanket, through which the imprisoned heat seeks unavailingly to escape. The suffocating atmosphere, surcharged with fire and moisture, breaks irrepressibly into a gray, ooze-like sweat, which no more resembles dew than the mephitic dampness of dungeons resembles mist. Disease and death pursue man implacably by day; they pursue him implacably by night also.

Shaw and the Fifty-fourth on those last two days could not fly from this foe. They had perforce to face its fiercest rays, march and bivouac beneath its pelting, pitiless beams. Under cover of darkness, July 16, they retreated from James Island to join the troops, concentrating on Morris Island, for the expedition against Wagner. No light labor was the march across James Island to the transports, because of a furious thunder-storm, and the swamp and mud encountered by the way. Early July 17, they landed on Folly Island. Here, though well escaped from one set of troubles, they fell immediately victims to another. The southern sun, "roasting and dazzling" officers and men the livelong day on the beach, was far more exhausting than the swamp and the storm of the night before. They had besides fallen short of rations. Coffee and hardtack comprised the extent of the knapsack store. From this combination of distressing circumstances the regiment was released at midnight, when it embarked for Morris Island, where it landed about daybreak of July 18. At six o'clock that afternoon it drew up before General Strong's headquarters, and began to prepare for action.

The Fifty-fourth was allotted the post of honor, and led the assaulting column at dusk against the great sand-fort. The quick step of the beginning broke later into a brisk run. Had the column reached, without resistance, the base of the outer wall, its momentum would have carried it precipitately up the scarp. The issue, in that event, might have been altogether dif

ferent.

But the night had ears, and the garrison awaited the onset in a state of armed expectancy. The assailants were permitted to approach until their van was well within rifle range, when the parapet started into sudden and tremendous activity. Three murderous volleys burst from the works and swept the head of the column back on its inner lines. Terrible execution they inflicted on the Fifty-fourth. Dead many of the brave fellows dropped on that perilous edge of battle; many more were wounded. This abrupt and bloody check threw into some confusion the ranks of the black regiment. There was in them some consternation also. The opening fire from those defending must always operate as a severe trial and shock to those storming breastworks. Death is never wholly anticipated, nor can it ever be a matter of indifference to the bravest veteran. Then, too, the stoutest soul quakes at the sight and sound of human agony, and on that July night before Wagner it was indeed hideous. The groans and screams of the wounded and dying, mingling with the furious explosions of small arms, combined to produce a scene of indescribable horror. That a body of troops recovers at all amid such appalling circumstances is due to the military principle of order and obedience, drilled as second nature into the rank and file, and to the steadfastness and energy of its recuperative centres. Each commissioned officer constitutes one of these rallying points. A regiment readily overcomes this first sharp shock, recruits its esprit de corps and courage, when its line officers rise, with a crisis, to the responsibility and evince themselves to their commands collected and intrepid. But were they to betray fear and irresolution, the incipient terror of the men would speedily cause a stampede. That the confusion and consternation of the Fifty-fourth did not so end was pre-eminently owing to the presence of mind and dauntless front of its young colonel. There are those who attribute to the human voice the marvellous property of making cowards of the fiercest brutes. Be this fact or fancy, it certainly possesses a much more wondrous gift, - the power to recall, in emergent moments, the soldier to honor and duty, to charm courage back to hearts trembling on the verge of a panic.

It was the magic of Shaw's voice which restored to the Fifty-fourth the complete possession of its sanity and valor. Resolutely and rapidly rallying his broken lines, he pressed impetuously forward at their head to the great rebel battery, and up its mighty slope to the deadly parapet, all the while the sand of the scarp and the sand of life were slipping from under their feet. Surer and swifter of foot, he quite outstripped his dusky warriors, attaining in advance of them the grim heights. There for a flashing instant he stood, unflinching and alone, facing his climbing companies and encouraging them by word and gesture to quicken their steps, so that with them he might dash down into the works; and then-he fell and rose above Fort Wagner and the clamor and carnage of that dreadful hour into the shining throng of the heroes of the Republic. Thick about him his black troops died, and into the same ditch with them his body was flung. United in life, history united them in a common grave and the immortality which together they gloriously won.

dences and independent landlords, sleeping on her beautiful hills. Lots which in 1818 sold for a thousand dollars were sold in 1870 for twenty-five dollars.

But presto, change! The bell rings; the curtain falls on old Florence, and rises on the new. What was an old-fashioned college town and county seat, inhabited by the charming sort of people naturally found in a centre of education, is all changed. From fifteen hundred inhabitants, a few years ago, it has suddenly grown to eight or ten thousand, gaining six thousand in less than six months. The beauty of site,

indeed much before. The people were satisfied with things as they were, like the people of many another place of similar character. They were conscious of their advantages in site and natural resources; and they had a dread of the bustle and hurry and mixed population that come with the development of manufacturing towns, and feared lest they should lose the distinctive and cherished character of their town as a refined seat of learning. But the on-rushing world of business and new enterprises would not let them be. Isolation was impossible. They must leave