My comrades smiled, as I undertook the novel duty, enjoying
the spectacle of a Massachusetts Republican converted into a Virginia
slave-master. To me it seemed rather an opportunity to lead them from
the house of bondage never to return. For, whatever may be the general
duty to this race, to all such as we have in any way employed to aid our
armies our national faith and our personal honor are pledged. The
code of a gentleman, to say nothing of a higher law of rectitude,
necessitates protection to this extent. Abandoning one of these faithful
allies, who, if delivered up, would be reduced to severer servitude
because of the education he had received and the services he had
performed, probably to be transported to the remotest slave region as
now too dangerous to remain near its borders, we should be accursed
among the nations of the earth. I felt assured that from that hour,
whatsoever the fortunes of the war, every one of those enrolled
defenders of the Union had vindicated beyond all future question, for
himself, his wife, and their issue, a title to American citizenship, and
become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of
Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.
Passing through the principal streets, I told the contrabands that when
they heard the court-house bell, which would ring soon, they must go to
the court-house yard, where a communication would be made to them.
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