“My massa,” replied the boy.
“Where is your massa now?”
“’Fore God, genl’men, I can’t tell you; he was goin’ up when I’se comin’ down.”
Pictures of the boy were preserved by Williams’s Battery, taken soon after the explosion, showing the boy in the patched tow garments he wore in his wild flight for liberty. General Logan kept him at his headquarters for some time.
I saw him there many times. After the war he went to Washington with them I think, and remained some years.
GETTING 2,000 SICK AND WOUNDED OUT OF HELENA, ARK.
ON the 10th of August, 1863, accompanied by my secretary, Miss Mary Shelton, now Mrs. Judge Houston of Burlington, Iowa, I started on my return trip to Vicksburg, with a heavy shipment of hospital supplies.
The Van Phul, the steamer on which we took passage at St. Louis, reached Helena, Ark., on the 16th of August.
When the boat landed at that post, we found, on inquiry, that there were over two thousand sick and wounded there, and so stopped over with a part of our supplies, the rest going on to Vicksburg, where I had a covered barge that had done duty on the Yazoo River during the siege, but which was then lying at the wharf of Vicksburg.