Minnie's Sacrifice

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

"I am a Union man," Louis said, "and am trying to reach the Lincoln soldiers."

"Den," said the man, "if dat am de fac I's got a place for you; come with me," and Louis having learned to trust the colored people followed him to a place of safety.

Soon it was noised abroad that another deserter had been seen in that neighborhood, but the colored man would not reveal the whereabouts of Louis. His master beat him severely, but he would let neither threats nor torture wring the secret from his lips.

Louis saw the faithfulness of that man, and he thought with shame of his former position to the race from whom such unswerving devotion could spring. The hunt proving ineffectual, Louis after the search and excitement had subsided resumed his journey Northward, meeting with first one act of kindness and then another.

One day he had a narrow escape from the bloodhounds. He had trusted his secret to a colored man who, faithful like the rest, was directing him on his way when deep ominous sounds fell on their ears. The colored man knew that sound too well; he knew something of the nature of bloodhounds, and how to throw them off the track.

So hastily opening his pen-knife he cut his own feet so that the blood from them might deepen the scent on one track, and throw them off from Louis's path.

It was a brave deed, and nobly done, and Louis began to feel that he had never known them, and then how vividly came into his mind the words of Dr. Charming: "After all we may be trampling on one of the best branches of the human race." Here were men and women too who had been trampled on for ages ready to break to him their bread, aye share with him their scanty store.

One had taken the shoes from his feet and almost forced him to take them. What was it impelled these people? What was the Union to them, and who were Lincoln's soldiers that they should be so ready to gravitate to the Union army and bring the most reliable information to the American General?

Was it not the hope of freedom which they were binding as amulets around their hearts? They as a race had lived in a measure upon an idea; it was the hope of a deliverance yet to come. Faith in God had underlain the life of the race, and was it strange if when even some of our politicians did not or could not read the signs of the times aright these people with deeper intuitions understood the war better than they did.

But at last Louis got beyond the borders of the confederacy, and stood once more on free soil, appreciating that section as he had never done before.