The three pioneer negroes were not long to be isolated from their race.  There was no known channel of communication between them and their old comrades, 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 curiosity of a village in the neighborhood of Boston.