As one of the negro companies marched off the field to picket a station at the Ferry, they passed within a few feet of some twenty of the Pennsylvania soldiers, just formed into line preparatory to marching to Beaufort.  The countenances of the latter, which I watched, exhibited no expression of disgust, dislike, or disapprobation, only of curiosity.  Other white soldiers gave to the weary negroes the hominy left from the morning meal.  The Major of the Fifty-Fifth, highest in command of the relieved regiment, explained very courteously to Colonel Higginson the stations and duties of the pickets, and proffered any further aid desired.  This was, it is true, an official duty, but there are more ways than one in which to perform even an official duty.  I rode back to Beaufort, part of the way, in company with a captain of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, who was the officer of the day.  He said “he wasn’t much of a negro-man, but he had no objection to their doing our fighting.”  He pronounced the word as spelled with two gs; but I prefer to retain the good English.  Colonel Montgomery, who had a partly filled regiment, most of whom were conscripts, said that on his return from Jacksonville he sent a squad of his men ashore in charge of some prisoners he had taken.  Some white soldiers seeing them approach from the wharf, one said,—­

“What are those coming?”

“Negro soldiers,” (word pronounced as in the former case,) was the answer.

“Damn ’em!” was the ejaculation.

But as they approached nearer, “What have they got with ’em?” was inquired.

“Why, some Secesh prisoners.”

“Bully for the negroes!” (the same pronunciation as before,) was then the response from all.

So quick was the transition, when it was found that the negroes had demonstrated their usefulness!  It is, perhaps, humiliating to remember that such an unreasonable and unpatriotic prejudice has at any time existed; but it is never worth while to suppress the truth of history.  This prejudice has been effectually broken in the Free States; and one of the pageants of this epoch was the triumphal march through Boston, on the 28th of May, on its way to embark for Port Royal, of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the first regiment of negro soldiers which the Free States have sent to the war.  On the day previous, May 27th, a far different scene transpired on the banks of the Mississippi.  Two black regiments, enlisted some months before in Louisiana under the order of Major-General Butler, both with line and one with field officers of their own lineage, made charge after charge on the batteries of Port Hudson, and were mown down like summer’s grass, the survivors, many with mutilated limbs, closing up the thinned ranks and pressing on again, careless of life, and mindful only of honor and duty, with a sublimity of courage unsurpassed in the annals of war, and leaving there to all mankind an immortal record for themselves and their race.