Negroes were drafted to go upon the coast to work in salt mills or to work upon the fortifications.  This duty they performed with remarkable willingness, until, perhaps, some Federal gunboat got their range and dropped a few shells among them.  Then no persuasion nor threat could induce them to remain, and numbers of them would strike out for home and often get lost and wander for days, half starved, through the swamps of the lower country, being afraid to show themselves to the whites for fear of being “taken up” and sent back.  Many were the adventures and hair-breath escapes these dusty fugitives had, and could tell them in wonderful yarns to the younger generation at home.  It may be that the negro, under mental excitement, or stimulated with strong drink, could be induced to show remarkable traits of bravery, but to take him cool and away from any excitement, he is slow at exposing himself to bodily dangers, and will never make a soldier in the field.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XL

Opening of 1865—­Gloomy Outlook—­Prison Pens—­Return to South Carolina of Kershaw’s Brigade.

The opening of the year 1865 looked gloomy enough for the cause of the Confederacy.  The hopes of foreign intervention had long since been looked upon as an ignis fatuus and a delusion, while our maritime power had been swept from the seas.  All the ports, with the exception of Charleston, S.C., and Wilmington, N.C., were now in the hands of the Federals.  Fort Fisher, the Gibraltar of the South, that guarded the inlet of Cape Fear River, was taken by land and naval forces, under General Terry and Admiral Porter.  Forts Sumter and Moultrie, at the Charleston Harbor, continued to hold out for a while longer.  The year before the “Alabama,” an ironclad of the Confederates, was sunk off the coast of France.  Then followed the “Albemarle” and the “Florida.”  The ram “Tennessee” had to strike her colors on the 5th of August, in Mobile Bay.  Then all the forts that protected the bay were either blown up or evacuated, leaving the Entrance to Mobile Bay open to the fleet of the Federals.

Sherman was recuperating his army around Savannah, and was preparing a farther advance now northward after his successful march to the sea.  At Savannah he was met by a formidable fleet of ironclads and men of war, which were to accompany him by sailing along the coast in every direction.  These were to form a junction with another army at Newburn, N.C.

Another matter that caused the South to despond of any other solution of the war than the bloody end that soon followed, was the re-election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.  The South felt that as long as he was at the head of the nation nothing but an unconditional surrender of our armies and the emancipation of the slaves would suffice this great emancipator.  To this the South could not nor would not accede as long as there were rifles