“Here,” says some one, “secession was first plotted,” and he points out houses which had been the residences of the Barnwells and the Barnwell Rhetts. Near here, another tells, is the plantation where the “_South-Side View_” was taken; and there are negroes in the village who tell of the rustic seat in the bough of a great live-oak tree, where Dr. Nehemiah Adams wrote the book, and of the appetizing claret cobblers they bore him to cheer him up, from time to time, in his work. Could the good Doctor return now, he would scarcely find the blacks so affectionately attentive, but he would be pleased to see that the plantation is in a much higher state of cultivation than when it elicited his eulogies. General Saxton had carriages waiting for us at the wharf, and, after a short drive through the sandy streets, we were taken to see the dress-parade of a regiment of negroes, commanded by a brother of General Howard. The men marched from their camps, by companies, into line with as steady a tramp and as soldierly a carriage as the average of other troops, and, however lacking in beauty the individual negro may be, the bitterest negro hater would have been willing to admit a thousand of them looked handsome. Yet these men were scarcely a month from the plantations! They had made little progress in the drill beyond the manual of arms and the formation of the regimental line, but what they did know, they knew thoroughly. They were all coal black, and seemed larger and more muscular than the negro troops raised farther north. General Saxton has, within his present district, over a hundred thousand negroes. He claims that all are now absolutely self-sustaining, save those swept in the wake of Sherman’s march. Even the rations issued to these are charged to them, and the thrifty negroes make all haste to quit leaning on the Government, lest their debt should swell to too great proportions. Most of the older-settled negroes, who were originally dependent on Government support, have already repaid the advances thus made them, and many have, besides, accumulated what is, for them, a handsome competence. The astonishment of our Doctor at the changes he witnessed, among these scenes of his earlier life, is unbounded. His old slaves have been greeting him very enthusiastically; and many a hand-kissing, or worse, has “Massa Richard” had to endure; but he sees among them manliness of bearing, and a sober cheerfulness wholly novel to his experience of negro character; and he begins to suspect that perhaps, after all, there were characteristics of the negro nature which all his former familiarity with it had not disclosed. Withal, he says, that he never saw the slaves of Beaufort so well clad, or seemingly so comfortable. General Saxton rather proudly responds that the peasantry of no country in the world is better behaved or more prosperous. ----- Footnote 17: The following are the main points of the military order under which Mitchelville is organized: