TOM AND HIS YOUNG MASTER
[In Richmond During the War, pages 178-179.]
A young soldier from Georgia brought with him to the war in Virginia a young man who had been brought up with him on his father’s plantation. On leaving his home with his regiment, the mother of the young soldier said to his negro slave: “Now, Tom, I commit your master Jemmy into your keeping. Don’t let him suffer for anything with which you can supply him. If he is sick, nurse him well, my boy; and if he dies, bring his body home to me; if wounded, take care of him; and oh! if he is killed in battle, don’t let him be buried on the field, but secure his body for me, and bring him home to be buried!” The negro faithfully promised his mistress that all her wishes should be attended to, and came on to the seat of war charged with the grave responsibility placed upon him.
In one of the battles around Richmond the negro saw his young master when he entered the fight, and saw him when he fell, but no more of him. The battle became fierce, the dust and smoke so dense that the company to which he was attached, wholly enveloped in the cloud, was hidden from the sight of the negro, and it was not until the battle was over that Tom could seek for his young master. He found him in a heap of slain. Removing the mangled remains, torn frightfully by a piece of shell, he conveyed them to an empty house, where he laid them out in the most decent order he could, and securing the few valuables found on his person, he sought a conveyance to carry the body to Richmond. Ambulances 131 were in too great requisition for those whose lives were not extinct to permit the body of a dead man to be conveyed in one of them. He pleaded most piteously for a place to bring in the body of his young master. It was useless, and he was repulsed; but finding some one to guard the dead, he hastened into the city and hired a cart and driver to go out with him to bring in the body to Richmond.
When he arrived again at the place where he had left it, he was urged to let it be buried on the field, and was told that he would not be allowed to take it from Richmond, and therefore it were better to be buried there. “I can’t do it. I promised my mistress (his mother) to bring his body home to her if he got killed, and I’ll go home with it or I’ll die by it; I can’t leave my master Jemmy here.” The boy was allowed to have the body and brought it to Richmond, where he was furnished with a coffin, and the circumstances being made known, the faithful slave, in the care of a wounded officer who went South, was permitted to carry the remains of his master to his distant home in Georgia. The heart of the mother was comforted in the possession of the precious body of her child, and in giving it a burial in the church-yard near his own loved home.
Fee or reward for this noble act of fidelity would have been an insult to the better feelings of this poor slave; but when he delivered up the watch and other things taken from the person of his young master, the mistress returned him the watch, and said: “Take this watch, Tom, and keep it for the sake of my boy; ’tis but a poor reward for such services as you have rendered him and his mother.” The poor woman, quite overcome, could only add: “God bless you, boy!”