The next was queried. "Ah, I's played de fool," he said, "in jist dat kind o' tradin'. I's an ole backslider. Ole Satan had me, sure, an' I cried, 'Massar Jesus, save me from dat horrible pit,' an' he fotch me out, an' put dese feet on de rock, and here I means to stan'."
Others were examined, and a season of prayer followed. Their prayers were marked for their originality and earnestness. Said one woman, "Oh Lord, do please hitch up your cheer a little nearer your winder—draw aside your curtain, an' look down 'pon us poor creturs, an' gib your table-cloth a good shake, dat we may pick up a few crumbs."
There were many of these much more intelligent than I supposed I should find them, and used as good language as the white people. House-servants and body-servants were more intelligent than those who lived only in the field. They were very imaginative, and talked with God. One woman in giving a sketch of slave life, said a young girl went to a night meeting contrary to orders, and for so doing was stripped naked and whipped in the presence of the other slaves, the master himself plying the lash. While she cried for mercy her master replied, "I'll give you mercy." "Good Lord do come and help me." "Yes, I'll help you" (and kept plying the lash). "Do, Lord, come now; if you ha'n't time send Jesus." "Yes, I'm your Jesus," retorted the inhuman persecutor, and he continued to ply the lash until thirty strokes were well laid on.
The colonel commanding this post called on me with a request to go to Gloucester Court-house, to look after the condition of the freedmen there. There were several very old, crippled people in Gloucester, in almost a nude condition. I agreed to go, and the colonel went to procure a buggy, as his own was broken; but he failed to get one, though more than a double price was offered, because he was a Yankee. He returned discouraged, as he was unwilling to send me in a Virginia cart, the only government conveyance. I told him I had frequently seen the wealthiest ladies sitting on straw, with no other seat in the cart. "O yes," he answered, "the F. F. V.'s ride in that way here. But you look too much like my mother to see you go in that style. I could not bear to have your children in Michigan know that I sent their mother out to ride thirty miles in that way;" and tears filled his eyes, as he referred to his own mother in his far off Northern home. I told him if I could accomplish any good by going, I was more than willing to take the cart-ride, as I could make a seat with my bale of clothing, and thus I went.
I crossed York River at Gloucester Point, and stepped into a store to wait for our soldier driver. Here a Southern brigadier-general addressed me in the following style:
"I reckon you are from the North, madam."
"I am from the State of Michigan," I said, "but more directly from
Washington."
"You Northern people can not be satisfied with robbing us of millions of dollars in slaves, that were just as much our property as your horses and cattle, but you stole our sheep and horses, or any thing else you could get hands on; and yet that was not enough. Now you have a bill in Congress to rob us of our land, and of course it will pass. Then we'll go to work and mix up a little cake to bake for our families, and you'll come and snatch even that away from us."
"You probably refer," I said, "to the bill just introduced, to allow the leaders in this Rebellion no more than twenty thousand dollars' worth of real estate, confiscating the balance, to sell in parcels to the soldiers and poor people, black or white, on liberal terms, to liquidate the war debt. This debt would never have been contracted, had not the South brought on the war. You fired upon Sumter; you determined to sever the Union. It was a bargain of your own making. You determined to make slavery the chief corner stone of the Republic, but another stone, Liberty, has ground it to powder. We had better accept the situation as we find it, and not call each other thieves and robbers because your chief corner-stone is no more. God never designed that we should make merchandise of human beings. In the written Word we find that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth. We find there no lines of distinction because of color or condition. Now let us drop slavery and hold it no longer as the bone of contention, and live henceforward a united nation."
With flushed face and flashing eyes he said, "Never, NEVER shall we give up our rights. We acknowledge you have overpowered us, but you have not, and never will, conquer us; we shall yet in some way secure our rights as Southerners, notwithstanding all your Northern preaching."