To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through Beaufort and back,--the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage.

They did march splendidly; this all admit.

M----'s prediction was fulfilled: "Will not -- -- be in bliss?
A thousand men, every one as black as a coal!" I confess it.

To look back on twenty broad double-ranks of men (for they marched by platoons),--every polished musket having a black face beside it, and every face set steadily to the front,--a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future,--it was something to remember; and when they returned through the same streets, marching by the flank, with guns at a "support," and each man covering his file-leader handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine.
The band of the Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town, and escorted us in.

Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in describing the affair, "And when dat band wheel in before us, and march on,--my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air.
I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures.
One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards, "We didn't look to de right nor to de leff.