surrounding them, they should not only have remained faithful to their masters, but that the stress of the time should have appeared to weld the bond between them.

That there was a wild and adventurous element among them is well known. It was to be expected, and was an element in whom the instincts of wild life in the jungle and the forests survived. Every large plantation had one or more who had the runaway spirit keenly alive. There were several on our place. They ran away when they were crossed in love or in any other desire of their hearts. They ran away if they were whipped, and, as they were the shirkers and loafers on the plantations, if anyone was whipped, it was likely to be one of them. Yet, curiously enough, if a runaway was caught and was whipped, he was very unlikely to run off again until the spirit seized him, when nothing on earth could stop him.* One other class was likely to furnish the ele

* We had three or four such young men on our plantation, and although the plantation lay within two or three miles of the roads down which Sheridan and Stoneman passed, and within twelve or fifteen miles of those along which Grant passed, these were the only negroes from our place who went off during the war. In all, four young men left us. If anyone wishes to get an insight into this phase of the

ment that went off, and this was the " pampered class." House-servants were more likely to go than field-hands. Their ears were somehow more attuned to the song of the siren.*

Against those who availed themselves of the opportunities offered them to escape from the bondage of domestic slavery may be put the great body of the Negro race who, whether from inability to grasp the vastness of the boon of liberty held out to them, or from fear of the ills they knew not of, or from sheer content with a life where the toil was not drudgery and the flesh-pots overbalanced the idea of freedom, not only held fast to their masters, but took sides with them with a quickened feeling and a deepened affection. For every one who fled to freedom, possibly one hundred stood by their masters' wives and children.

Doubtless there were many-possibly, the most of them-who remained from sheer inertia or fear to leave. But a far larger number identified themselves with their masters, and

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negro character and at the same time pass a delightful half hour, let him read Harry Stillwell Edwards's story, "Two Runaways."

* That very "Uncle Tom," of whom I have spoken as a stern and terrifying spectacle of grandeur, left his home and went to Philadelphia.

this union was not one of lip-service, but of sentiment, of heart and soul.

In truth, they were infected with the same spirit and ardor that filled the whites, and had the South called for volunteers from the Negroes, I question not that they could have gotten half a million men.' *

A story is told of one of the old Negroes who belonged to the family into which General Scott married. He went to the war to take care of one of his young masters. He had no doubt whatever as to the justice of the cause, but General Scott was to his mind the embodiment of war and carnage, and the General had espoused the other side. This disturbed him greatly, and one night he was heard praying down outside the camp. After praying for everyone, he prayed: "And O Lord, please to convut Marse Lieutenan' Gen'l Scott and turn him f'om de urrer o' he ways."

The devotion of slaves to their masters in time of war is no new thing under the sun. The fact that their masters are in arms has always, no doubt, borne its part in the phenomenon. But it does not wholly account for the absolute

* Several regiments were enlisted in the beginning of the war, but the plan was changed and they were disbanded.

devotion of the Negroes. It is to the eternal credit at once of the Whites and of the Negroes that, during these four years of war, when the white men of the South were absent in the field they could intrust their homes, their wives, their children, all they possessed, to the guardianship and care of their slaves, with absolute confidence in their fidelity. And this trust was never violated. The Negroes were their faithful guardians, their sympathizing friends, and their shrewd advisers, guarding their property, enduring necessary denial with cheerfulness, and identifying themselves with their masters' fortunes with the devotion, not of slaves, but of clansmen.

The devotion of the body-servants to their masters in the field is too well known almost to need mention, and what is said of them in this paper is owing rather to the feeling that the statement of the fact is a debt due to the class from which these came rather than to thinking it necessary to enlighten the reader.

When the Southern men went into the field there was always a contest among the Negroes as to who should accompany them. Usually, the choice of the young men would be for some of the younger men among the servants, while

the choice of the family would be for some of the older and more staid members of the household, who would be prudent, and so, more likely to take better care of their masters. And thus there was much heart-burning among the younger Negroes, who were almost as eager for adventure as their masters.

Of all the thousands of Negroes who went out as servants with their masters, I have never heard of one who deserted to the North, and I have known of many who had abundant opportunity to do so. Some were captured, but escaped; others apparently deserted, but returned laden with spoils.

My father's body-servant, Ralph Woodson, served with him throughout the entire war. While at Petersburg, where the armies were within a mile of each other, he was punished for getting drunk and he ran away. But instead of making for the Union lines and surrendering to a Union picket, which he could easily have done, he started for home, sixty miles away. He was, however, arrested as a straggler or runaway, and my father, hearing of him, sent and brought him back to camp, where he remained to the end.

An even more notable instance which has