Army Life in a Black Regiment (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Karen Fisher Younger (Introduction)

Overview

Army Life in a Black Regiment is a riveting and empathetic account of the lessons learned from an encounter between a New England intellectual and nearly a thousand newly freed slaves. In the fall of 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson was asked to take command of the 1st Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, and he immediately understood the significance of the experiment and enthusiastically accepted the position. Drawing extensively from the diary he kept during the seventeen months he commanded the regiment, Higginson details the nature of camp life, the drills and discipline of the men, the expeditions up rivers and into the southern interior, and the invasion and occupation of Jacksonville, Florida. This literary classic is stitched together with dramatic events, factual reporting, humor, and insightful reflection on human nature. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781411435087
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Series:	Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	606,445
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

While as a minister at the Free Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, Thomas Wentworth Higginson shocked America by leading an attack on the Boston Court House to free Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave being held there.  He also supported John Brown as one of the Secret Six, the group of conspirators who supported Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. The high point of his career as a freedom fighter came in late 1862, when he entered military service as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent. Higginson is probably best remembered today as the individual who “discovered” the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson.