“Think we can take Richmond, boy?”
“Dar be right smart o’ men round here, but I dunno ’bout dar being able for to take Richmond, sah.”
“‘Right smart o’ men!’” said a Captain. “Why, this is only a flea-bite to what’s coming to eat up the rebel army. You’ll see them coming up like locusts. Here’s McClellan with half a million around here, and there’s Burnside down there, coming from Carolina with a hundred thousand more, and General Banks with two hundred thousand more, and General Fremont—why, he can’t count his men he has so many!”
The old fellow opened his eyes wider and wider as the list of imaginary armies was run over. Then, gazing up intently in the officer’s face:
“Got all dem men?” he asked in a subdued voice.
“Yes, and more.”
The negro threw out his arms and ejaculated:
“Oh! dear Mesopotamia! Whatever will become of massa, I wonder?”
The negroes wanted to be free, but they did not want to work. Many of them who had run away from their masters were employed by the Federals in unloading stores. They worked from daylight until dark, singing over it, talking, shouting, arguing, making such a shindy. A Virginian negro never did a quarter of a day’s work on his master’s plantations, and they soon found out the difference when they became free niggers and earned wages. They did not much relish their rise. A party of niggers would come up to the Colonel’s tent.