“About nine o’clock we procured a hearty supper from the generous negro, who even gave me his hat,--an appropriate presentation, as one of my companions remarked, by an ‘intelligent contraband’ to the reliable gentleman of ‘The New York Tribune.’ The negro did picket-duty while we hastily ate our meal, and stood by his blazing fire. The old African and voice and moistened eyes, as we parted from them with grateful hearts. ‘God bless negroes!’ say I, with earnest lips. During our entire captivity, and after our escape, they were ever our firm, brave, unflinching friends. We never made an appeal to them they did not answer. They never hesitated to do us a service at the risk even of life; and under the most trying circumstances, revealed a devotion and a spirit of self-sacrifice that were heroic. “The magic word ‘Yankee’ opened all their hearts, and elicited the loftiest virtues. They were ignorant, oppressed, enslaved; but they always cherished a simple and beautiful faith in the cause of the Union, and its ultimate triumph, and never abandoned or turned aside from a man who sought food or shelter on his way to freedom.” The month of May, 1864, saw great progress in the treatment of the colored troops by the government of the United States. The circumstances were more favorable for this change than they had hitherto been. Slavery had been abolished in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Missouri. The heroic assault on Fort Wagner, the unsurpassed bravery exhibited at Port Hudson, the splendid fighting at Olustee and Honey Hill, had raised the colored men in the estimation of the nation. President Lincoln and his advisers had seen their error, and begun to repair the wrong. The year opened with the appointment of Dr. A. T. Augusta, a colored gentleman, as surgeon of colored volunteers, and he was at once assigned to duty, with the rank of major. Following this, was the appointment, by Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, of Sergeant Stephen A. Swailes, of Company F., Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, as second lieutenant. M. R. Delany, M. D., was soon after appointed a major of negro volunteers, and assigned to duty at Charleston, South Carolina. W. P. Powell, Jr., received an appointment as surgeon, about the same time. The steamer Planter, since being brought out of Charleston by Robert Small, was under the command of a Yankee, who, being ordered to do service where the vessel would be liable to come under the fire of rebel guns, refused to obey; whereupon Lieutenant-Colonel Elwell, without consultation with any higher authority, issued an order, placing Robert Small in command of the “Planter.”