January 23, 1864

January 23, 1864

---An article in Harper’s Weekly tells of a raid by Union troops and the consequent liberation of slaves in northeastern part of North Carolina:

General Wild’s late raid into the interior of North Carolina abounded in incidents of peculiar interest, from which we have selected a single one as the subject of the illustration on page 52, representing the liberation by the negro battalion of the slaves on Mr. Terrebee’s plantation. As the reader may imagine, the scene was both novel and original in all its features. General Wild having scoured the peninsula between Pasquotank and Little Rivers to Elizabeth City, proceeded from the latter place toward Indiantown in Camden County. Having encamped overnight, the column moved on into a rich country which was covered with wealthy plantations. The scene in our sketch represents the colored troops on one of these plantations freeing the slaves. The morning light is shining upon their bristling bayonets in the back-ground, and upon a scene in front as ludicrous as it is interesting. The personal effects of the slaves are being gathered together from the outhouses on the plantation and piled, regardless of order, in an old cart, the party meanwhile availing themselves in a promiscuous manner of the Confiscation Act by plundering hens and chickens and larger fowl; and after all of these preliminary arrangements the women and children are (in a double sense) placed on an eminence above their chattels and carted off in triumph, leaving “Ole Massa” to glory in solitude and secession.

---Josiah Marshall Favill, a young officer on the III Corps staff with the Army of the Potomac, tells of the Corps HQ refurbishing and preparation for the upcoming visit of a party of ladies:

January 23d. Our sawmill has been set in motion again, and scores of men are busily engaged felling trees and sawing them into boards for the great building to be put up at corps headquarters. It will be 90×60 and decorated internally, similarly to ours, in the most artistic manner. Broom has been commissioned to take entire charge of the supper, wines, etc., and will be certain to make that part of the proposition a success. Wilson, of our staff, whose sister is the wife of Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, has invited that lady and as large a party of young ladies as she can collect to become our guests for two or three weeks. She has accepted and in consequence we are making great preparations for their reception. The general’s wife is coming, too; Alvord’s pretty sister from New York and several of the other officers’ wives, so we shall soon be full of women. How curious it will seem, and how correct we shall have to be in our habits. For three years no woman has been at our headquarters, and it seems almost incredible that at last we are to have a fashionable and beautiful bevy, all to ourselves.