The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861

Notwithstanding all these attempts, the negroes, with rare exceptions, still believed that the Yankees were their friends. They had learned something in Presidential elections, and they thought their masters could not hate us as they did, unless we were their friends. They believed that the troubles would somehow or other help them, although they did not understand all that was going on. They may be pardoned for their want of apprehension, when some of our public men, almost venerable, and reputed to be very wise and philosophical, are bewildered and grope blindly. They were somewhat perplexed by the contradictory statements of our soldiers, some of whom, according to their wishes, said the contest was for them, and others that it did not concern them at all and they would remain as before. If it was explained to them, that Lincoln was chosen by a party who were opposed to extending slavery, but who were also opposed to interfering with it in Virginia,—that Virginia and the South had rebelled, and we had come to suppress the rebellion,—and although the object of the war was not to emancipate them, yet that might be its result,—they answered, that they understood the statement perfectly. They did not seem inclined to fight, although willing to work. More could not be expected of them while nothing is promised to them. What latent inspirations they may have remains to be seen. They had at first a mysterious dread of fire-arms, but familiarity is rapidly removing that.

The religious element of their life has been noticed. They said they had prayed for this day, and God had sent Lincoln in answer to their prayers. We used to overhear their family devotions, somewhat loud according to their manner, in which they prayed earnestly for our troops. They built their hopes of freedom on Scriptural examples, regarding the deliverance of Daniel from the lions' den, and of the Three Children from the furnace, as symbolic of their coming freedom. One said to me, that masters, before they died, by their wills sometimes freed their slaves, and he thought that a type that they should become free.

One Saturday evening one of them asked me to call and see him at his home the next morning. I did so, and he handed me a Bible belonging to his mistress, who had died a few days before, and whose bier I had helped to carry to the family vault. He wanted me to read to him the eleventh chapter of Daniel. It seemed, that, as one of the means of keeping them quiet, the white clergymen during the winter and spring had read them some verses from it to show that the South would prevail, enforcing passages which ascribed great dominion to "the king of the South," and suppressing those which subsequently give the supremacy to "the king of the North." A colored man who could read had found the latter passages and made them known. The chapter is dark with mystery, and my auditor, quite perplexed as I read on, remarked, "The Bible is a very mysterious book." I read to him also the thirty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah, wherein the sad prophet of Israel records the denunciations by Jehovah of sword, pestilence, and famine against the Jews for not proclaiming liberty to their servants and handmaids. He had not known before that there were such passages in the Bible.

The conversations of the contrabands on their title to be regarded as freemen showed reflection. When asked if they thought themselves fit for freedom, and if the darkies were not lazy, their answer was, "Who but the darkies cleared all the land round here? Yes, there are lazy darkies, but there are more lazy whites." When told that the free blacks had not succeeded, they answered that the free blacks have not had a fair chance under the laws,—that they don't dare to enforce their claims against white men,—that a free colored blacksmith had a thousand dollars due to him from white men, but he was afraid to sue for any portion of it. One man, when asked why he ought to be free, replied,—"I feed and clothe myself and pay my master one hundred and twenty dollars a year; and the one hundred and twenty dollars is just so much taken from me, which ought to be used to make me and my children comfortable." Indeed, broken as was their speech and limited as was their knowledge, they reasoned abstractly on their rights as well as white men. Locke or Channing might have fortified the argument for universal liberty from their simple talk. So true is it that the best thoughts which the human intellect has produced have come, not from affluent learning or ornate speech, but from the original elements of our nature, common to all races of men and all conditions in life; and genius the highest and most cultured may bend with profit to catch the lowliest of human utterances.

There was a very general desire among the contrabands to know how to read. A few had learned; and these, in every instance where we inquired as to their teacher, had been taught on the sly in their childhood by their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before her, trying to make progress.

In natural tact and the faculty of getting a livelihood the contrabands are inferior to the Yankees, but quite equal to the mass of the Southern population. It is not easy to see why they would be less industrious, if free, than the whites, particularly as they would have the encouragement of wages. There would be transient difficulties at the outset, but no more than a bad system lasting for ages might be expected to leave behind. The first generation might be unfitted for the active duties and responsibilities of citizenship; but this difficulty, under generous provisions for education, would not pass to the next. Even now they are not so much behind the masses of the whites. Of the Virginians who took the oath of allegiance at Hampton, not more than one in fifteen could write his name, and the rolls captured at Hatteras disclose an equally deplorable ignorance. The contrabands might be less addicted than the now dominant race to bowie-knives and duels, think less of the value of bludgeons as forensic arguments, be less inhospitable to innocent sojourners from Free States, and have far inferior skill in robbing forts and arsenals, plundering the Treasury, and betraying the country at whose crib they had fattened; but mankind would forgive them for not acquiring these accomplishments of modern treason. As a race, they may be less vigorous and thrifty than the Saxon, but they are more social, docile, and affectionate, fulfilling the theory which Channing held in relation to them, if advanced to freedom and civilization.

If in the progress of the war they should be called to bear arms, there need be no reasonable apprehension that they would exhibit the ferocity of savage races. Unlike such, they have been subordinated to civilized life. They are by nature a religious people. They have received an education in the Christian faith from devout teachers of their own and of the dominant race. Some have been taught (let us believe it) by the precepts of Christian masters, and some by the children of those masters, repeating the lessons of the Sabbath-school. The slaveholders assure us that they have all been well treated. If that be so, they have no wrongs to avenge. Associated with our army, they would conform to the stronger and more disciplined race. Nor is this view disproved by servile insurrections. In those cases, the insurgents, without arms, without allies, without discipline, but throwing themselves against society, against government, against everything, saw no other escape than to devastate and destroy without mercy in order to get a foothold. If they exterminated, it was because extermination was threatened against them. In the Revolution, in the army at Cambridge, from the beginning to the close of the war, against the protests of South Carolina by the voice of Edward Rutledge, but with the express sanction of Washington,—ever just, ever grateful for patriotism, whencesoever it came,—the negroes fought in the ranks with the white men, and they never dishonored the patriot cause. So also at the defence of New Orleans they received from General Jackson a noble tribute to their fidelity and soldier-like bearing. Weighing the question historically and reflectively, and anticipating the capture of Richmond and New Orleans, there need be more serious apprehension of the conduct of some of our own troops recruited in large cities than of a regiment of contrabands officered and disciplined by white men.

But as events travel faster than laws or proclamations, already in this war with Rebellion the two races have served together. The same breastworks have been built by their common toil. True and valiant, they stood side by side in the din of cannonade, and they shared as comrades in the victory of Hatteras. History will not fail to record that on the 28th day of August, 1861, when the Rebel forts were bombarded by the Federal army and navy, under the command of Major-General Butler and Commodore Stringham, fourteen negroes, lately Virginia slaves, now contraband of war, faithfully and without panic worked the after-gun of the upper deck of the Minnesota, and hailed with a victor's pride the Stars and Stripes as they again waved on the soil of the Carolinas.

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD

Along a river-side, I know not where,
I walked last night in mystery of dream;
A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair,
To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam
Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.

Pale fire-flies pulsed within the meadow mist
Their halos, wavering thistle-downs of light;
The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst,
Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright,
Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night.

Then all was silent, till there smote my ear
A movement in the stream that checked my breath:
Was it the slow plash of a wading deer?
But something said, "This water is of Death!
The Sisters wash a Shroud,—ill thing to hear!"

I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three,
Known to the Greek's and to the Norseman's creed,
That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree,
Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede,
One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time shall be."

No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed,
But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,
To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed;
Something too deep for joy, too high for sorrow,
Thrilled in their tones and from their faces gleamed.

"Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,"—
So sang they, working at their task the while,—
"The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn:
For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's Isle?
O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn?

"Or is it for a younger, fairer corse,
That gathered States for children round his knees,
That tamed the wave to be his posting-horse,
The forest-feller, linker of the seas,
Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's?

"What make we, murmur'st thou, and what are we?
When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud,
The time-old web of the implacable Three:
Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud?
Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it; why not he?"

"Is there no hope?" I moaned. "So strong, so fair!
Our Fowler, whose proud bird would brook erewhile
No rival's swoop in all our western air!
Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file,
For him, life's morn-gold bright yet in his hair?

"Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames!
I see, half-seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned
The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims
Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands?
Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?"

"When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew,
Ye deem we choose the victors and the slain:
Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true
To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain?
Yet here the victory is, if ye but knew.

"Three roots bear up Dominion: Knowledge, Will,—
These two are strong, but stronger yet the third,—
Obedience, the great tap-root, that still,
Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred,
Though the storm's ploughshare spend its utmost skill.

"Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'T is not we
Denounce it, but the Law before all time:
The brave makes danger opportunity;
The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime,
Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be?

"Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat
To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw?
Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet