His mistress, he said, had been kind to him,
and had never spoken so harshly to him as a captain's orderly in the
Naval Brigade had done, who assumed one day to give him orders. She had
let him work where he pleased, and he was to bring her a fixed sum, and
appropriate the surplus to his own use. She pleaded with him to go away
with her from Hampton at the time of the exodus, but she would not force
him to leave his family. Still he hated to be a slave, and he talked
like a philosopher about his rights. No captive in the galleys of
Algiers, not Lafayette in an Austrian dungeon, ever pined more for free
air. He had saved eighteen hundred dollars of his surplus earnings in
attending on visitors at Old Point, and had spent it all in litigation
to secure the freedom of his wife and children, belonging to another
master, whose will had emancipated them, but was contested on the ground
of the insanity of the testator. He had won a verdict, but his lawyers
told him they could not obtain a judgment upon it, as the judge was
unfavorable to freedom.
The most frequent question asked of one who has had any means of
communication with the contrabands during the war is in relation to
their knowledge of its cause and purposes, and their interest in it.
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