Camp Near Charlestown, Virginia, March 9, 1862.
After finishing my letter to you yesterday, as I came out of
the Provost Marshal's office, I saw a sight that I would gladly photograph for
you. A large wagon full of negro men, women, and children, overrunning like the
old woman's shoe. It had come in from the farm, near town, of some disloyal
Rebel. There stood the load of helpless and deserted contrabands; an
embarrassment and a question typifying the status of the slave
everywhere, as the army marches on.
“You see that wagon,” said my friend and quondam enemy, the
secession postmaster. “Well, that is an answer to all your talk of protection
and good government.” “No,” said I; “under the government, and with the peace
you then enjoyed, there were no such wagons. You had better hasten back under
the government, or all your negroes will be in wagons or on foot, whither they
choose. War is a rough master, but it has no rules or processes for the
enforcement of the slave code.”
The question meets you at every turn. At the tavern where we
stopped for a few days after coming to town were two slaves, — an Aunt Chloe,
whose bread and pastry and cake realized Mrs. Stowe's fiction; her son George,
eighteen years old, who waited on table, and whose free father is a
carpenter in Charlestown. Day before yesterday, on going to town, I found “aunty”
in great affliction. Her only boy, George, had “run away.” When General
Hamilton went on to Smithfield, George went too.
He wanted to be free, instead of following longer the
apron-string and status of his mother. Either his free father or our
servants or the change of air had “poisoned” his mind, as our host, his “owner,”
phrased it. I might add case after case. The leaven is working; there is no
stopping it.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 205-6
No comments:
Post a Comment