Worcester daily spy., 1861-11-01

Nt""'N - = iS'SS iSsIj WIN bGIFGu viii
the three months men at Fortress Monroe, and
was assigned to the exclusive supervision and
control of the negroes who sought a refuge
there contributes an interesting sketch of their
character and condition to the Atlantic Month.
iy for November. We copy the following ex
tracts
MORALITY OF THE NEGROES.
There was one striking feature in the con-
trabands which must not be omitted | did
not hear protane or vulgar word spoken by
them during my superintendent, remark
which it will be difficult to make of any sixty
four white men taken together anywhere in
our army. Indeed, the greatest discomfort of
soldier, who desires to remain a gentleman
in the camp, is the perpetual reiteration Of Ian
guage which no decent lips would utter in a
sisters presence. But the negroes, so dog
matically pronounced unfit for freedom, were
in this respect models for those who make
high boasts of civility of manners and christ
ian culture Out of this sixty -four who work
ed for us, all but half dozen were members
OF tie church, generally the Baptist Although
without pastor, they held religious meeting
on the Sunday y hch we passed in Hampton
which was attended by about sixty colored
persons and three hundred soldiers. The de-
votions were decorousy conducted, batting
some loud shouting by one or two excitabe
brethren, which the better sense of the rest
could not suppress. Their prayers and exhor
tations were fervent, and marked by simpli.
city which is not intrequenty the richest elo.
quence The soldiers behaved with entire
propriety, and two exhOrted them with pious
JUNCTION, as children of one father ransOmed
by the same Redeemer.
MASTERS AND SLAVES.
During our encampment at Hampton l oc-
cupied much of my leisure time in conversa
tions with the cOntrabands, both at their work
and in their shanties, endeavoring to collect
their currents OF thought and feeling. 1t re.
mains for me to give the results, so far as any
could be arrived at There were more negroes
OF unmixed African blood than we expected to
find. But many were entirely bleached One
man, working on the breastworks, owned by
his cousin, whose name he bore, was no dark
er than white laborers exposed by then oCcu
patton 10 the sun, and could not he distinguish.
ed as of negro descent. Opposite our quarters
was young slave woman who had been three
tlmes mother without ever having been
wife. You could not discern in her three
daughters, either in color, feature or texture of
hair, the slightest trace of African lineage.
They were as lghtfaced and fair haired as the
Saxon slaves who the Roman Pontiff, Gregory
the great, met in the market Of Rome. Ii
they were to be brought here and their pedi.
gree concealed, they would readily mingle
with our population and marry white men,
who would never suspect that they were not
pure Caucasians.
THEIR DESIRE FOR FREEDOM.
There is a universal desire among the slaves
to be free Upon this point my inquiries
were particular, and always with the same re.
suit. When we said to them, You don't
want TO be free-your masters say you don't'
they manifested much indignation, answer
ing, 1--WE do want to be free-we want to be
for ourselves" We inquired further, ':Do the
house slaves who wear their masters clothes
want to be free g" ave never hoard of ono
who did not, was the instant reply. There
might be, they said, some half crazy one who
did not care to be free, but they had never
seen one. Even old men and old women with
crooked backs, who could hardly walk or see,
shared the same feeling. An intelligent seces
sionist, Lowry, by name, who was examined
at headquarters, admitted that majority OF
the slaves wanted to be free. The more intel
ligent the slave and the better he had been
used the stronger this desire seemed to be.
remember one such particularly, the most in.
telligent one in Hampton, known as can infiu
ential darkey" (''darkey" being the familiar
term applied by contrabands TO themselves.)
He could read, was an exhorter in the church,
and offciated in the absence of the minister.
He would have made competent juryman.
His mistress he said had been kind to him,
and had never spoken 50 harshly to him as IA
captains orderly in the naval brigade had
done, who assumed one day to give him orders.
She had let him work where he pleased, and
he was to bring her fixed sum, and appro
pirate the surplus to his own use. She plea
ded with him to 90 away from Hampton with
her at the time OF the exodus, but she would
not force him to leave his family. Still he
hated to be a slaYe he talked like philoso-
pher about his rights, No captive i'll the gal
leys of Algiers, not Lafayette in an Austrian
dungeon, ever pined more for free air. lie
bad saved eighteen hundred dollars Of his sur
plus earnings in attending on persons at Old
Point, and had spent it all in litigation to Sc
cure the freedom OF his wife and children, be-
longing to another master, whose will had
emancpated them, but was contested on the
ground OF the insanity of the testator. He had
won verdict, but his lawyers told him they
could not obtain judgment upon it, as the
udge was unfavorabe to freedom.
THEIR KNowLEDGE OF THE WAR.
The most frequent question asked of one
who has had any means OF communication
with the contrabands during the wac is in re-
lation TO their knowledge OF its cause and pur-
poses and their interest in it, One thing was
evident-indeed, you could not talk with
slave who did not without prompting give the
same testimony-that their masters had been
most Industrious in their attempts to persuade
them that the Yankees were coming down
there only to get the and-that they would
kill the negroes and manure the ground with
them, or carry them off to Cuba or Hayti and
sell them. An intelligent man who had be-
longed to Col. Joseph Segar-almost the only
Union man at heart in that region, and who,
for that reason, being in Washington at the
time the war begun, had not dared to return
to Hampton-served the staff Of Gen.
Pierce. He bore the highest testimony to
the kindness of his master, who, he said,
told him to remain that the Yankees were the
friends of his people, and would use them well.
But" said David, (for that was his name, Il
never heard of any other master who talked
that way, but they all told the worst stories
about the Yankees, and thC.>nistresses were
more furious even than the masters" David,
| may add spite of his good MASTER longed to
be free The masters, in their desperation,
had within a few months resorted to another
device to secure the loyalty of their slaves.
The colored Baptist minister had been some
thing of pet among the whites, and had OBJ
tanned subscriptions from some benevolent
citizens to secure the freedom of a handsome
daughter of his who was exposed to sale on an
auction block, where her beauty inspired COM
petition Some leading secessionists, Lawyer
Hope for one, working somewhat upon his
gratitude and somewhat upon his vanity, per-
suaded him to offer the services OF himself
and his sons, in published communication,
to the cause of Virginia and the confederate
states. The arttce did not succeed. He lost
his hold on his congregation, and could not
have safely remained after the whites LETT. He