Three years in the Sixth Corps

by George T. Stevens

Except the circle of buildings immediately surrounding the grove and springs, there were but very few dwellings in the neighborhood, those evidently intended for the purpose of receiving summer boarders. It was said that about five hundred boarders used to spend the summer here every year, and double that number of visitors took rooms at Warrenton, a mile and a half distant, from which place they rode to the springs morning and evening to quaff the odorous fluid, or to stroll about the groves. The new White Sulphur Springs in the Shenandoah Valley had, for some years past, diverted the patronage from the Warrenton springs, and thither, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, great numbers of fashionable southerners had resorted.

It was evidently a blessing that this resort had been despoiled by war. It sadly needed renovating and modernizing, and so long as the old buildings stood, no southerner had the enterprise to pull them down and replace them with better ones. A few thousands of dollars in the hands of an enterprising Yankee would soon make this one of the most delightful resorts in the southern states.

One of the characteristic features of our picket duty on the Rappahannock, was the great number of contrabands who came through our lines.

Squads of gray-headed old negroes, young negro women and children, carrying in bundles all their worldly store, constantly applied for permission to enter the lines on their way to the north. The cavalry who scouted in front on the south side of the river, returned with wagons loaded with little darkies, whose mothers and elder sisters and grandsires trudged along on foot. All wagons going to Warrenton without other lading were filled with these refugees from slavery, old and young, some black, some olive and some white; some with black curly wool, some with wavy black hair, and some with brown ringlets.

Our northern soldiers had, by this time, begun to look upon slavery in its true light. They had also learned that the negroes were their friends. It required a long schooling to teach them this lesson, but it was thoroughly learned at last. We heard now no jeering and hooting when a negro or wagon load of negroes went by. The soldiers treated them with the greatest kindness, and aided them in every way to get off to the north.

While our boys did not hesitate long to take from the white inhabitants any articles that they thought they were in need of, it was considered an act of outrageous meanness to take a chicken or any other property from the negro people.

While passing through Orleans, on our way to the present camp, a great many slave children were standing along the streets watching us. Many of these children were nearly white. The attention of one our captains, who was one of the last relics among us of that class of men who were loyal to their country but despised the negro, was fixed upon a beautiful child of olive complexion and wavy hair, who stood gazing in innocent wonder at the passing column. The child was indeed a picture of unadorned beauty, in her long coarse garment of "negro cloth." The captain turned to a staff officer and as a tear stole down his rough cheek at the thought of the degradation of the beautiful child, he exclaimed, "Isn't it horrible."

It is hardly necessary to say that the captain's sentiments from that moment underwent a radical change, and ever after there were none more ready to afford assistance to the needy refugees, than our generous but hitherto prejudiced captain.

Many of these colored refugees had the greatest faith in what they deemed the promises of the Bible. There was an almost universal faith in the ultimate overthrow of the south by the north, and this belief was founded in most cases upon their supposed Bible promises.