There is a universal desire among the slaves to be free. Upon this point
my inquiries were particular, and always with the same result. When
we said to them, "You don't want to be free,--your masters say you
don't,"--they manifested much indignation, answering, "We do want to be
free,--we want to be for ourselves." We inquired further, "Do the house
slaves who wear their master's clothes want to be free?" "We never heard
of one who did not," was the instant reply. There might be, they said,
some half-crazy one who did not care to be free, but they had never seen
one. Even old men and women, with crooked backs, who could hardly walk
or see, shared the same feeling. An intelligent Secessionist, Lowry by
name, who was examined at head-quarters, admitted that a majority of the
slaves wanted to be free. The more intelligent the slave and the better
he had been used, the stronger this desire seemed to be. I remember one
such particularly, the most intelligent one in Hampton, known as "an,
influential darky" ("darky" being the familiar term applied by the
contrabands to themselves). He could read, was an exhorter in the
Church, and officiated in the absence of the minister. He would have
made a competent juryman.
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