and yet those comrades knew, or believed with the certainty of
knowledge, how they had been received. If inquired of whether more were
coming, their reply was, that, if they were not sent back, others would
understand that they were among friends, and more would come the next
day. Such is the mysterious spiritual telegraph which runs through the
slave population. Proclaim an edict of emancipation in the hearing of a
single slave on the Potomac, and in a few days it will be known by his
brethren on the Gulf. So, on the night of the Big Bethel affair, a squad
of negroes, meeting our soldiers, inquired anxiously the way to "the
freedom fort."

The means of communicating with the fort from the open country became
more easy, when, on the 24th of May, (the same day on which the first
movement was made from Washington into Virginia,) the Second New York
Regiment made its encampment on the Segar farm, lying near the bridge
which connected the fort with the main-land, an encampment soon enlarged
by the First Vermont and other New York regiments. On Sunday morning,
May 26th, eight negroes stood before the quarters of General Butler,
waiting for an audience.

They were examined in part by the Hon. Mr. Ashley, M.C. from Ohio, then
a visitor at the fort. On May 27th, forty-seven negroes of both sexes
and all ages, from three months to eighty-five years, among whom were
half a dozen entire families, came in one squad. Another lot of a dozen
good field-hands arrived the same day; and then they continued to come
by twenties, thirties, and forties. They were assigned buildings outside
of the fort or tents within. They were set to work as servants to
officers, or to store provisions landed from vessels,--thus relieving
us of the fatigue duty which we had previously done, except that of
dragging and mounting columbiads on the ramparts of the fort, a service
which some very warm days have impressed on my memory.

On the 27th of May, the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, the First
Vermont, and some New York regiments made an advance movement and
occupied Newport News, (a promontory named for Captain Christopher
Newport, the early explorer,) so as more effectually to enforce the
blockade of James River. There, too, negroes came in, who were employed
as servants to the officers. One of them, when we left the fort, more
fortunate than his comrades, and aided by a benevolent captain, eluded
the vigilance of the Provost Marshal, and is now the cu