"Massa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him. Golly he'um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."
The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own, lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might
"Massa tink it day ob doom,
But we ob Jubilee."
The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.
A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly's Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker's advent to command was attended by a sharp and
stirring order that speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty. Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres, and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill, and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.
While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive designation of "Pig Stickers."
Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge, and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, for
rest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that the Commander-in-Chief intended the army to make.