“It is singular that the negroes have no fear of the fate you predict for them. They say, on the contrary, ‘We have been supporting our masters and their families all our lives, and now it is a pity if we cannot earn a living for ourselves.’”
“Well, I hope they will succeed!”
This is the reply the emancipated slave-owners almost invariably make to the above argument; sometimes sarcastically, sometimes gravely, sometimes commiseratingly, but always incredulously. “The negro is fated;” this is the real or pretended belief; and this they repeat, often with an ill-concealed spirit of vindictiveness, an “I-told-you-so!” air of triumph, until one is forced to the conclusion that their prophecy is their desire.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FIELD OF SPOTTSYLVANIA.
I walked on to the tavern where Richard H. Hicks was baiting his horse. The landlord took me to a lumber-room where he kept, carefully locked up, a very remarkable curiosity. It was the stump of a tree, eleven inches in diameter, which had been cut off by bullets—not by cannon-shot, but by leaden bullets—in the Spottsylvania fight. It looked like a colossal scrub-broom. “I had a stump twice as big as this, cut off by bullets in the same way, only much smoother; but some Federal officers took it from me and sent it to the War Department at Washington.”
He had many battle-scars about his house to show; one of which I remember: “A shell come in through the wall thar, wrapped itself up in a bed that stood hyer, and busted in five pieces.”
In one of the rooms I found a Union officer lying on a lounge, sick with the prevailing fever. He seemed glad to see a Northern face, and urged me to be seated.
“It is fearfully lonesome here; and just now I have no companion but the ague.”
Learning that he had been some time in command of the post, I inquired the reason why the citizens appeared so eager to save the government expense in feeding their poor.
“It is very simple: they wish to get control of the business in order to cut off the negroes. They had rather have the assistance the government affords withdrawn altogether, than that the freedmen should come in for a share. It is their policy to keep the blacks entirely dependent upon their former masters, and consequently as much slaves as before.”