"Where are you going?" I said to a short, thick-set, gray-bearded old man, shuffling along the road; his toes bulging from his old boots, and a tattered straw hat on his head,—his gray wool protruding from the crown.
"I do'no, boss, where I's going, but I reckon I'll go where the army goes."
"And leave your old home, your old master, and the place where you have lived all your days?"
"Yes, boss; master, he's gone. He went to Richmond. Reckon he went mighty sudden, boss, when he heard you was coming. Thought I'd like to go along with you."
Negroes coming into the lines.
His face streamed with perspiration. He had been sorely afflicted with the rheumatism, and it was with difficulty that he kept up with the column; but it was not a hard matter to read the emotions of his heart. He was marching towards freedom. Suddenly a light had shined upon him. Hope had quickened in his soul. He had a vague idea of what was before him. He had broken loose from all which he had been accustomed to call his own,—his cabin, a mud-chinked structure, with the ground for a floor, his garden patch,—to go out, in his old age, wholly unprovided for, yet trusting in God that there would be food and raiment on the other side of Jordan.
It was a Jordan to them. It was the Sabbath-day,—bright, clear, calm, and delightful. There was a crowd of several hundred colored people at a deserted farm-house.
"Will it disturb you if we have a little singing? You see we feel so happy to-day that we would like to praise the Lord."