These barbarous raids were made for private and public plunder. To destroy public stores is admissible in war, but to loot private houses and seize private furniture were a disgrace to the troops who were guilty of such outrages, and a still greater disgrace to the officers who allowed it. But all this was innocent compared to the atrocity of the effort to arouse the negroes of the black belt of the State to insurrection against the scanty white population of that section, especially when every American of any intelligence remembered the horrors of the servile insurrection in San Domingo. The conduct of their enemies during and immediately after the war proves that the Southern people were not mistaken as to the ultimate aim of the party that came into control of the government in 1860, even admitting that they made a mistake in the remedy adopted.
In November, on account of the depredations of Colonel Higginson's negro regiment, the governor notified the legislature that Col. Henry Floyd, commanding Camden militia, had asked leave to call out his forces for home defense, and he requested the legislature to decide if he had authority under the conscript act to make such a call. A spirited discussion of several days resulted, in which it appeared that the majority of the body regarded the conscript law as unconstitutional, but no definite action was taken. The legislature did, however, authorize the governor to obstruct the navigable streams and to hire or impress slaves to perform the necessary labor, and the governor proposed to General Beauregard that the State should hire or impress the slaves and put them under the control of officers detailed by the general, a proposition
