Patriot boys : and, Prison pictures

Front matter

/ CoLl.

Tine Institute of Museum and Library Services through an-lndiana State Library LSTA Grant

AND

Introduction

TT T'E — "grandma," our young folks, and I — live up here on the old battle-ground, in a quaint, old-fashioned farm-house, older than many of the old folks now living ; and every day, when the sun goes down, we gather round the great wood-fire in the sitting-room, and talk and tell stories by the hour together. I tell the most of the stories j for, though I am only a plain man, going about in a slouched hat, a rusty coat, and a pair of pantaloons old and threadbare enough to have been worn by one of the Pilgrims, I have mingled with men, seen a great many places, and been almost all over the world.

My own children like my stories, because they think they are true, and because they are all about the people I have met, and the places I have seen, viii Introduction.

and so give them some glimpses of what is going on in the busy life outside of our quiet country home ; but I do not expect other young folks to like them as well as my own do, — for their own father will not tell them. However, I have here written out a few of the many I know, in the hope that, if they are not as wonderful as the Arabian Nights, or as laughable as the Grimm Tales, they yet may afford some trifling pleasure and instruction to boys and girls I have never seen, and who gather of evenings around firesides far away from the one where all my stories are first told.

Contents

PATRIOT BOYS.

Pagb

The Virginla. Boy :

Part I. Slavery

ONE pkasacat day in July, 1864, I took passage on a steamer running between Washington and City Point, for a short visit into Virginia. The boat was crowded with passengers, — furloughed officers rejoining their regiments, convalescent soldiers returning to their commands, and white and black recruits going to the front to fill the places of the noble fellows who had fallen in our long and bloody struggle with the desperate slave power. Among the latter were about a hundred and fifty men, recently enlisted in the Thirt\'-first Regiment of United States Colored Infantry. They were huddled together on the open bow of the boat ; and though stout, healthy-looking fellows, were a motley group of all ages, colors, and nationalities.

Among them were free negroes from the North, freedmen from the South, Indians from the Mohawk Valley, Malays from farther India, and even a shaved

Chinaman, all the way from the Celestial Empire. Men of every race except the white race, and from every clime except the Arctic regions, were gathered there in a space not more than forty feet square ! Here, thought I, is a chance to see the world ; to "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," at Uncle Sam's expense, and in a government steamer ! It was an opportunity not to be lost ; so, leaving my travelling companion to nod himself to sleep in the shade of the pilot-house, I went down amgn^ them. \^dJ«^ HA^d here let me say to the young reader, who would study human nature and the ways of men, that he must take no stately airs and false dignity out with him into the world. He must leave such things at home, along with his stiff dickey and dandy clothes, or the poorest man he meets will draw himself within his shell, and though the ear be put down ever so close, it will fail to catch the music of his life, — music, it may be, as strange as that which throbs in the tiny lungs of the little sea wanderers which are thrown up along the shore.

Well, I left my dignity behind me, and went down among the black recruits. The first one I accosted was an. old man with a seamed face, gray hair, and eyes like two stars blazing through the black folds

The VirgtJtia Boy. 113

of a thunder-cloud. " You," I said to him, " are an old man to be in the war."

" I can handle a musket as well as a younger man, sir," he answered. "In a time like this every man of my color, young or old, should be at the front."

This was in our darkest days, before the fall of Atlanta; when Grant sat hand-tied before Petersburg, and Early's greyhounds were chasing Hunter through the Shenandoah Valley, and barking away at the very gates of Washington.

" I am glad to hear you say so," I said, warmly ; "such pluck as yours would have freed your race a century ago."

" They 've pluck enough," he said. " That is n't what 's the matter. It 's ignorance. They don't know their own strength. These Southern blacks think because a white man can read and fire a gun that he 's a superior being. I 've been telling them it ain't so ; and, now that they have muskets in their hands, they begin to believe me."

" I am told that in their first battle they fight better than white men, because they think the musket makes them invincible."

" Yes, it 's so. I 've seen them go where a white man would n't venture, — these degraded black slaves," — and there was a slight sneer in his tone as he said this, — "that you and I are accustomed

to despise."

" Not /, old man," I answered. " I 've known the Southern negro ahnost all my life, and think him of better blood than the chivalry. But are not you a freedman ? "

" No, sir ! " he replied, " I 'm a/r^^man ; born free, in York State, right under the droppings of the sanctuary,— close to Scripture Dick's (Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson) in Binghampton."

'' And you left a comfortable home, at your time of life, to come out and fight for the rest of your race .? "

" I did. I stood it till I could n't stand it no longer, and then I come. You see, I 'd worked sixtyone years for myself, and the little rest of my days I thought I 'd work for my race and my country."

"You are a brave, true man," I answered. "I am glad to* know you."

" Thank you," he rejoined. " I am glad to know you, sir, if you can look below the skin, and detect the man, whatever his clothes or color." - Continuing the conversation, I learned that the name of this man was William Pierce ; that he had been in Washington recruiting for his regiment, and was then going to City Point with the squad of colored soldiers, — two thirds of whom, he said, were escaped slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas. On my remarking, that I wanted to know such of them as were worth knowing, he said : —

" Ah, yes ; you want to crack their cocoa-nuts, — to get the juice out of them. I always do that myself I never meet a man, no matter how poor he is, but I get some good out of him. That 's the way to get real learning ; the way to study natur', — human natur'."

Within the next hour he called a score or more of his comrades up to the water-tank, on which we were seated, and I "cracked their cocoa-nuts." Some of them were tolerably soft, others intolerably hard ; but all had something in them, which flowed out when tapped by a free word or a kind look, rich, racy, and original, as are the utterances of all uncultivated men, of whatever color.

One, whose story interested me greatly, was a stout, jovial young fellow, who gave his name as Sam Nichols, and said he had been the slave of a Major Jarvis, of Louisville, Kentucky. Another was an aged man — turned of sixty-six — named Henry Washington, who had belonged to James Blain of Nottaway County, Virginia. Though so old, he was wearing his country's uniform, and bearing the hardships of the field in the service of Captain Pitkin, Quartermaster-Gen-

Ii6 Patriot Boys.

eral of the department One of his sons, he said, was in the army; the other — a man "done grown" • — had been sold a few years before at Petersburg, and was then languishing his life away at the far South.

The stories of these two men might interest you \ but they would not so well illustrate the life of the Virginia slave, both before and during the war, as the history of a quadroon boy, whom the old Sergeant brought up to me on that greasy hatchway, and who, till far into the night, sat on a low stool in my state- ,room, living over again his short but strange and eventful career.

He was a youth of about nineteen, with an erect, well-knit frame, glossy black hair, a clear olive complexion, straight, comely features, and an eye like a coal burning at midnight. He was born in a little hut on a plantation not far away from Charlestown, Virginia. The hut was of logs laid up in clay, and it had a mud chimney, an earthen floor, board windows, and a slat door, through which the wind and the overseer could look in of winter nights, and see that the occupants were all snug and warm as they should be.

Besides the boy, the cabin contained an iron crane, a cracked kettle, a half-dozen bricks doing duty as

The Virginia Boy. wy

andirons, a rough bench, a three-legged chair, a few wooden bowls and spoons, a low bedstead on its ver}^ last legs, another boy blacker than he, but said to be his brother, and a pale-faced, fragile little woman, who was his mother. This was when the youth was born. Two weeks later the little woman was driven to the field to work, and — she never came back again.

Then the olive-faced boy changed his residence. He was taken to the children's quarters, — a long, low, log shant}^, where the plantation orphans were huddled. There he was consigned to the tender mercies of a toothless hag, whose soul, from long looking on her own black visage, had caught its murky hue, — the ver}' blackness of midnight. How much he suffered from this old woman, how many blows she made his little back to bear, how many cold days she drove him shivering away from the fire, how many winter nights she sent him supperless to his hard bed on Ihe cabin floor, — the boy did not knowj but he well remembered that one night, when he was about five years old, she fell over upon the hearth and was roasted like a partridge. The older children tried to rescue her ; but he went off into a corner by himself, and falling on his knees, thanked God that he was about to take the old

Ii8 Patriot Boys.

hag to heaven, as he took Elijah, in a chariot of flame.

Another old woman took the place of the one who was "translated," and she was some improvement on the last ; but her spirit, too, had been soured by long oppression, and the selling away, one by one, of all her children. At times, when the bitter memories came over her, she would vent her bad feelings on the helpless little ones about her; but she attended to their physical wants, and gave them enough to eat, and a warm seat by the winter's fire. And so the little boy grew up, a neglected weed in this great garden of a world.

One day, when he was eight years old, his mastei came to the cabin with two bewhiskered and bejewelled "gentlemen," and ranging all the children in a row across the floor, he said, " There they are ! Take your pick. Five hundred dollars apiece ! "

They "picked" half a dozen boys of about his own age, and among them his black "brother," but left him behind. One of the men was disposed to take him, but the other objected that he was "too smart," and so he escaped a journey to the far South and a toilsome life on a sugar plantation, — for these men were negro-traders.

Though so young, he had before this learned that

The Virgi7iia Boy. 1 19

his master's business was the raising of slaves for market ; that he fed and fattened the younger ones, and every year sold off as many as were above five years old ; and so made his living by coining into money the blood and bones of beings whose bodies were as strong, and whose souls were as much in the likeness of the Maker, as his own was.

Some few days after the traders went away, the overseer came to the cabin, and asking the old woman for "Yaller Joe," took the boy by the collar, and marched him off to the tobacco-field. There he was set at work from sunrise to sunset; and he went no more to the children's quarter, being sent to lodge with some of the field- hands.

This was the first great sorrow of the boy's life ; not that he disliked work, but his young heart had wound itself about his little companions ; and though he had felt cold and hunger and every grief in the old cabin, it was his home.

But his sorrow, like all the sorrows of childhood, soon passed away, and he found other Mends among the black folks w^ho worked with him in the fields.

Among them was a little boy of about his own age, who had somehow escaped being sold to the South. He was very black, but very bright; and though a poor slave child, with no friend in all the world but

I20 Patriot Boys.

his slave mother, he had a heart so light and happy that he made everybody about him almost as happy as he was. The two boys slept together in the same cabin, and worked together in the same field, and soon became as fast fi"iends as were David and Jonathan.

And so three years went away, and the annual sale of young immortals left the two boys, Joseph and Robert, still at work on the old plantation.

One morning, about this time, and right in the hoeing season, word was circulated through the quarters that all the slaves, old and young, were to have a holiday, and to come up to the green in front of the "great house" for a general jollification. It was a' strange event, and a strange time for it to happen ; but all the negroes arrayed themselves in their best, and, with cheerful faces and merry hearts, went up to the mansion. The two boys, unsuspicious of any wrong, were following the rest, when an old negro, hobbling along beside them, said : —

" I say, you boys, I reckon dar 'm a cat in dis yere meal-tub. Massa hain't ober loikely ter feast him darkies right in de middle ob wuck-time. Dis chile doan't keer, fur he 'm too ole ter fotch a bad dollar, but ye young 'uns had better tuck yer legs off ter de woods, and leff de jollyfiration go."

At this, the boys paused, and took counsel together. It could not be, they thought, that their master would be so base as to sell them under such pretences ; but the old negro said he would ; that he had lived with the white man seventy years, and knew him capable of any kind of meanness or deception. This inclined them to be wary ; but duty, they thought, required they should obey their master, and so they went to the mansion.

The court-yard contained several acres, tastefully laid out, and bordered by a dense growth of flowering shrubs and currant-bushes ; and among these bushes they quietly hid themselves until the "merr}^-making " began in true Virginia fashion.

About two hundred negroes, of both sexes and all ages, had gathered in little knots on the lawn, eagerly waiting the signal to engage in their usual holiday sports, when their master and the overseer came out of the mansion. Going among them, the white men ordered this one and the other off to the field, till less than fifty were left clustered about the court-yard. These were told to sit down on the grass, and to rem.ain- quiet until they were wanted. This they did, and in half an hour several strange white men rode up to the house, and the "sport" of the day began. Then the faces, lately so radiant with 6 sunshine, became overshadowed with clouds and deluged with rain. It was a sad, sad time. For years these simple people had associated together, and now, without a word of warning, they were to be separated; parents from children, brothers from sistfers, husbands from wives, to meet no more this side of heaven. It seems to me — and I have seen many such scenes — that all the misery which can be borne by weak human nature has been borne by the poor blacks at these slave-sales. Such things, thank God, are now gone by forever ; but it may be well to once in a while recall them, for they remind us that the men who have been guilty of so great cruelty in the past must be kept in check, or they may do still greater wickcidness in the future.

Watching their opportunity, the two boys after a while stole away to the woods, where they remained until nightfall. Robert had a mother, and he feared that she might have been sold ; and it was with a heavy heart that he at last turned his steps towards the quarter. Joseph had no mother, but he sympathized fully with the feelings of Robert; and it was a great relief when the good woman met them at the door-way of the little cabin. She had not been sold, but "Aunt Ruth" and "Uncle Jake," Joseph's only remaining relatives, were already on their way to the far South.

Four more toilsome years went away, and the boys were nearly fifteen, before another large sale occurred ; but every year a half-dozen or more poor people were disposed of privately.

Among them was a young girl on whom Joseph had cast such eyes as young men very naturally cast on young women. Her name was Deborah. She was not far from fifteen and was ver}' beautiful, with comely features, and a bright, clear complexion. She was a ser^^ant at the mansion, and her intelligence and gentle disposition had won her the confidence and affection of all on the plantation. One day her master told one of the men-servants to accompany her to Winchester ; and, mounted on the back of an ancient mule, they set out, not suspecting the real object of the journey. Arrived at Winchester, they sought out the man to whom Deborah was consigned. He proved to be a slave-trader, and — the poor girl never came back again.

This occurrence sank deep into the hearts of the two boys. They were only fifteen, but they determined to be free, — free if they had to walk over burning ploughshares, and make their home among the icebergs of the northern seas. Soon an event occurred which led them to put their resolution into immediate action.

Another great holiday, another great "jollyfiration," came to the slaves on the old plantation. Again all ages went up to the mansion, and this time Joseph and Robert were too much grown to hide away among the currant-bushes. With the other slaves they were ranged along the lawn, and offered to the inspection of the men-dealers. The trader's cross was already on the back of Robert and his mother, — they were sold, — when he paused bebefore Joseph, and asked him his age.

" I don't know, sir," answered the boy.

" Don't know ! " exclaimed the trader ; " this boy is a fool!" and he passed on, much to the boy's relief. Once before he had been let off because he was " too smart " ; now he escaped because he was a fool ; and the same man was the judge in both cases.

But the boy did not know how old he was. Scarcely any slave does know. He was born in the " dog-days," or at the first snow-fall ; and he died at Christmas, or "a month after New-Year"; and that, written on the rude stake which marks his grave, is the whole of the slave's history.

But Robert and his mother were sold, and that was a sad night at the little cabin.

They were to set out on the following morning for Richmond, New Orleans, or some other slave market, there to be again sold, and, no doubt, separated forever.

The prospect was appalling to the wretched mother; but she cared less about it for herself than for her son. WTiatever became of herself, she wanted him to be free; and as she sat that evening by the meagre hearth, stirring silently the embers of the low fire, which, like her own hopes, was fast going out in the darkness, she turned suddenly to Robert, and said : " Run, Robby ! Go ter-night, — ter onst. Keep de North Star right afore you, and travel on till you come ter freedom ! "

For a moment Robert, too, sat gazing vacantly into the fire, but then he looked up, and answered, " Joe and I hab planned ter go, mother ; but we '11 not stir a step widout you."

" I can't go. I 'm too old. I has rheumatiz. I could n't walk four mile a day. You 'd only be kotched wid me along ! " groaned the poor woman, rocking her body back and forth in her grief

" Wall ; if we is kotched we '11 be no wuss off. We won't go widout you," now said Joseph.

This decided her, and she at once set about preparing for the dangerous journey. What surplus food was in her own and' the adjoining cabins — for the other blacks were let into the secret — was soon collected in two small bundles ; and, about midnight, they all sat down by the cheerless hearth, to wait till the moon should set, and they could go off in safety.

Every night for six long years the boys had sat there ; and every night, during all of that time, they had gone to sleep on the narrow cot in the corner j but, whether the tranquil stars were telling of the peace and joy of heaven, or the wailing storm was echoing the unrest and sorrow of the earth, they had never lain down without a dark shadow settling about them, shutting out the green fields, and the blue skies, and the golden-tinted clouds which color the dreams of other boys, and leaving in sight only the narrow pallet, the wretched hut, and the sweatsprinkled fields of the old plantation. But that night their spirits rose from out the shadow; and, though thick clouds were shrouding all the sky, they saw the stars shining ; and one star — to our eyes only a little speck, twinkling away in the Northern heavens — come out, and grow, hour by hour, till it seemed a great sun sent to light them on their journey. Years rolled away as the boys looked, and they became men, with strength to endure any hardship and overcome any obstacle that might be in their way to freedom.

In the midst of their reverie a rap came at the rickety door, and a low voice said : " Ho ! in dar ! You — brack folks!"

Rising, Joseph undid the rude fastening, and let in the old man — Uncle David — who, years before, had warned the boys away from the great "jollyfiration." Helping him to settle himself upon a rude bench beside the hearth, Joseph said : " It 'm late fur you ter be round, Uncle Dave. What 'm done broke now ? "

" Nuffin 's done broke," answered the old negro ; *'but suffin 'ould be mighty sudden, ef old Dave had n't a come ; b'case you 's a gwine off widout eber axin' him, when he know-ebery crook and turn ob dat road, jess like he 'd a trabelled it all his life."

" And why did n't you eber trabel it, Uncle ? " asked Robert's mother.

"'Case de ole 'ooman lub de Missus, and would n't go ; but young Dave he went 'fore you was born, and arter he bought hisseff and git inter big business down dar in Baltimore, he holped a heap ob pore folks ober dat ar road ; and he '11 holp you j and dat 's what I 'se come ter tell you 'bout."

" But we hain't a gwine ter Baltimore," said the boys. "We'se a gwine stret up Norf."

" And dat 's jess how you '11 be took, and brung back, and sole whar you '11 neber git away agin. Massa '11 be shore ter foller on de stret road. You muss lay low at de ole cabin on de mount'in till dey 'm off on de hunt ; den you take de Norf star ober your leff shoulder, and put fur Baltimore. Go ter Dave, — ony brack folks '11 tell you whar he am, — and he '11 fix you de ress ob de way."

They thanked the old man ; and, as he passed out of the low doorway, he put his hands on the heads of the boys, and asked Him who is the Father of the fatherless to be their guide and protector. Not long afterwards, they silently unbarred the door again, and stole out into the darkness.

Part II. On The Way To Freedom

The plantation was on the western slope of the Blue Ridge, and, changing their route when they entered the forest, the fugitives climbed the long ascent, and made their way to a deep ravine which indents the eastern side of the mountain. In this ravine, hidden by a thick growth of pines and cedars, was the " ole cabin " to which " Uncle David " had alluded.

It was a wild, secluded spot, seldom, if ever, visited by a white man. About a year before, the two bo3^s had discovered it, when rambling over the mountain on a Sunday ; and its existence becoming known to the other slaves, it had been the refuge of the few who, since then, had staked their lives in a race with the dogs of their master. Shut in by high rocks and mountain-pines, and approached only by a shallow brook, which drowned the traces of footsteps, and balked the scent of bloodhounds, it was a spot where the runaway could lie for months as secure as if buried chin-deep amid the snows of Can^a.

The hut was a rude structure of stones, roughly laid up in the mud of the stream; and it looked, overgrown as it was with moss and lichens, as if it had stood there since the antediluvian ages ; but old David, who knew everything, — when it had once been told him, — insisted that it was built by one of his master's slaves, who ran away when he was a boy, and never afterwards was seen or heard of, — except now and then of a dark night when some late-stirring negro caught a glimpse of his ghost issuing from the smoke-house with a juicy ham or a brace of fat pullets over his shoulder. This could hardly be; for though the invisible gentry are accused of overturning chairs and tipping tables, it cannot be supposed that any ghost — even a black one — ever descended to the robbing of hen-roosts and smoke-houses. But, whether old David was right or wrong, it was certain that a human skeleton, its bones bleached to a snowy whiteness, and its clothing rotted away to the merest tinder, was found extended on the floor of the strange cabin when it was first discovered.

Into this cabin, just as the sun was saying " Good morning" to the world, the fugitives entered. The food they had brought, if carefully husbanded, would last them a week ; and so they determined to remain there a couple of days ; and by that time they hoped their pursuers would be far away in a wrong direction.

Having decided on this delay, they sat down under a tree, and were watching the sun as it rose slowly above the mountain, when they heard the cry of dogs in the distance. Moving silently into the cabin, they waited. Swiftly it came on, — the yell of hounds and the shouts of men, — till it sounded directly over their heads ; a shrill, terrible cry, like the peal of the bell which summons the condemned man forth to his funeral. The woman sank to her knees, her hands clasped together, and her lips moving in mute supplication ; and the boys stood like statues, their teeth clenched, and their ears strained to catch the lightest sound which should come from the ravine below them.

They were not long in waiting. Soon the dogs reached the spot where the fugitives had struck the stream in their ascent to the cabin. Halting there, the fierce beasts sent up cry after cry, which rang through the deep wood, till even the still leaves seemed to tremble with terror. Erelong the voices of men mingled with the cry of the dogs, and then came the crisis in the lives of the dark people. The hounds had lost the scent in the water ; the men knew it, and were deliberating whether to follow up or down the little rivulet. If they went up, the fugitives were lost ; if down, their way might yet be clear to freedom. The boys listened, and heard the words which were spoken. There were three of them, — their master, his brother, and the overseer. The latter thought the fugitives had gone up the ravine, but the others said, "No. The boys are smart and fleet-footed. They have taken to the water \ but they '11 make as many miles as they can before dark. If we follow down the run, the hounds will catch the trail again in half an hour."