“Mr. Leland, you never did anything contrary to a gentleman. I always maintained it. Now please tell me the truth. Is it true that you’re a great friend of Jeff Davis?”
“Damn Jeff Davis!” I replied.
“And you ain’t a major in the Confederate service?”
“I’m a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born one.”
“And you ain’t had no goings on with the rebels up the river to bring back the Confederacy here?”
“Devil a dealing.”
And therewith I explained how it was that I went unharmed up into the rebels’ country, and great was the joy of Harrison, who, as I found, had taken my part valiantly against those who suspected me.
There was a droll comedy the next day on board the steamboat on which I departed. A certain Mr. H., who had been a rebel and recanted at the eleventh hour and become a Federal official, requested everybody on board not to notice me. Sandford learned it all, and chuckled over it. But the captain and mate and crew were all still rebels at heart. Great was my amazement at being privately informed by the steward that the captain requested as a favour that I would sit by him at dinner and share a bottle of wine. I did so, and while I remained on board was treated as an honoured guest.
And now I would here distinctly declare that, apart from my political principles, from which I never swerved, I always found the rebels—that is, Southern and Western men with
whom I had had intimate dealings—without one exception personally the most congenial and agreeable people whom I had ever met. There was not to be found among them what in England is known as a prig. They were natural and gentlemanly, even down to the poorest and most uneducated.