ENGAGEMENT ON LONG ISLAND.

Though there was no fighting on Sullivan’s Island during my stay there, Confederate soldiers at times crossed the inlet from Sullivan’s to Long Island, in the night and engaged in skirmishes with Union soldiers, who had entered the upper end of that island and camped there.  Whether these Confederate scouts were ever successful in routing the Union forces on the island or not I have never learned, but I know that they were several times repulsed with considerable loss.

NEGROES ESCAPE.

The way the Confederates came to the knowledge that Union soldiers were on Long Island was that the group of negroes who preceded us on Sullivan’s Island had found out that Union soldiers were camping on the upper end of Long Island.  So one night quite a number of them escaped by swimming across the inlet that divides Sullivan’s Island and Long Island, and succeeded in reaching the Union line.

The next day it was discovered that they had swam across the inlet, and the following night they were pursued by a number of Confederate scouts who crossed in a flat boat.  Instead of the capture of the negroes, who would have been victims of the most cruel death, the Confederate scouts were met by soldiers from the Union line, and after a hot engagement they were repulsed, as they usually were.

BUILDING A BATTERY ON LONG ISLAND.

Finally the Confederates took a large number of the group of which I was a member from Sullivan’s to the south shore of Long Island and there built a battery, and mounted several small field guns upon it.  As they were afraid of being discovered in the daytime we were obliged to work on the battery nights and were taken back to Sullivan’s in the morning, until the work was completed.

We were guarded by Confederate soldiers while building the battery, as, without a guard it would have been easy for any of us to have reached the Union line on the north end of Long Island.  Sullivan’s Island was about five miles long.

A NEGRO SERVANT MURDERED.

One of the most heartless deeds committed while I was on Sullivan’s Island, was that of the murder of a negro boy by his master, a Confederate officer to whom the boy had been a body servant.  What the rank of this officer was I am not sure, but I think he was a Major, and that he was from the state of Georgia.  It was a common thing for southern men to carry dirks, especially during the war.  This officer had one, and for something the boy displeased him in, he drew the knife and made a fatal stab between the boy’s collar bone and left shoulder.  As the victim fell at the brutal master’s feet, we negroes who had witnessed the fiendish and cowardly act upon a helpless member of our race, expected an