Although without a pastor, they held
religious meetings on the Sundays which we passed in Hampton, which were
attended by about sixty colored persons and three hundred soldiers. The
devotions were decorously conducted, bating some loud shouting by one
or two excitable brethren, which the better sense of the rest could not
suppress. Their prayers and exhortations were fervent, and marked by a
simplicity which is not infrequently the richest eloquence. The soldiers
behaved with entire propriety, and two exhorted them with pious unction,
as children of one Father, ransomed by the same Redeemer.
To this general propriety of conduct among the contrabands intrusted to
me there was only one exception, and that was in the case of Joe ----;
his surname I have forgotten. He was of a vagrant disposition, and an
inveterate shirk. He had a plausible speech and a distorted imagination,
and might be called a demagogue among darkies. He bore an ill
physiognomy,--that of one "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." He
was disliked by the other contrabands, and had been refused admission to
their Church, which he wished to join in order to get up a character.
Last, but not least, among his sins, he was accustomed to boat his wife,
of which she accused him in my presence; whereupon he justified himself
on the brazen assumption that all husbands did the same.
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