Fig. 23. “Colored troops under General Wild, Liberating slaves in North Carolina.”
Brigadier General Edward Wild was an abolitionist and friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. General Wild recruited blacks for the USCT as well as white officers. Wild recruited Stowe’s half-brother James C. Beecher as an officer in the USCT. General Wild commanded a brigade of Black troops known as “Wild’s African Brigade.” Wild’s brigade was composed of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry as well as the 2nd and 3rd North Carolina Colored Volunteers. In the latter months of 1863 Wild led his black troops on an expedition into North Carolina to liberate slaves. The following article appeared in Harper’s Weekly on January 23, 1864.
GENERAL WILD’S late raid into the interior of North Carolina abounded in incidents of peculiar interest, from which we have selected a single one…the liberation by the negro battalion of the slaves on Mr. Terrebee’s plantation. As the reader may imagine, the scene was both novel and original in all its features. General Wild having scoured the peninsula between Pasquotank and Little Rivers to Elizabeth City, proceeded from the latter place toward Indiantown in Camden County. Having encamped overnight, the column moved on into a rich country which was covered with wealthy plantations. The scene in our sketch represents the colored troops on one of these plantations freeing the slaves. The morning light is shining upon their bristling bayonets in the back-ground, and upon a scene in front as ludicrous as it is interesting. The personal effects of the slaves are being gathered together from the outhouses on the plantation and piled, regardless of order, in an old cart, the party meanwhile availing themselves in a promiscuous manner of the Confiscation Act by plundering hens and chickens and larger fowl; and after all of these preliminary arrangements the women and children are (in a double sense) placed on an eminence above their chattels and carted off in triumph, leaving “Ole Massa” to glory in solitude and secession.