Audiobook · read by volunteers
Army Life in a Black Regiment
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911)
Read by FNH · 14 chapters · 8 h 39
About the book
In 1862 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a New England writer and abolitionist, took command of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment of freed slaves to be mustered into the service of the United States during the Civil War. Army Life in a Black Regiment is his account of those months: the camp diary, expeditions up the rivers and inlets of the Carolina coast, the men’s songs and talk, their courage under fire and the doubts the army and the country held about them. Higginson writes with clear affection and a curious eye, and his portraits of individual soldiers are vivid. Fourteen chapters, read by one LibriVox volunteer, fill about eight and three-quarter hours. It is a firsthand witness to a pivotal chapter of American history.
Introduction
Thomas Wentworth Higginson lived from 1823 to 1911. He was an American writer, minister and abolitionist, and during the Civil War he commanded a regiment of formerly enslaved men. His memoir, Army Life in a Black Regiment, appeared in 1869 and draws on the journal he kept during his service and on essays he wrote about the experience.
The book belongs to war and military writing, memoirs and the social history of its period. It describes the First South Carolina Volunteers, as the author explains in the opening pages, the first slave regiment mustered into the service of the United States during the war, and it records their training, their expeditions along the coast and their daily life. Chapters bear titles such as Introductory, Camp Diary and Up the St. Mary’s, which suggest the mix of narrative and observation it contains.
Higginson’s writing is literate and humane, and he took pains to record the songs, sayings and character of the soldiers he commanded. As a white officer writing in the nineteenth century, he also reflects the assumptions of his time, and a modern reader will notice both his respect and his limits.
The recording has fourteen chapters, read by a single LibriVox volunteer, and lasts about eight hours and forty minutes. Today it is worth hearing as a primary source of a very particular kind, and for its picture of a moment when the meaning of freedom was being tested on the battlefield.
Public domain
Thomas Wentworth Higginson died in 1911: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text