ed as unseaworthy, got on board,--still under the old
woman's orders,--and drifted forty miles down the river to our lines.
Trowbridge happened to be on board the gunboat which picked them up,
and he said that when the "flat" touched the side of the vessel, the
grandmother rose to her full height, with her youngest grandchild in her
arms, and said only, "My God! are we free?" By one of those coincidences
of which life is full, her husband escaped also, after his punishment,
and was taken up by the same gunboat.
I hardly need point out that my young lieutenants did not have to teach
the principles of courage to this woman's grandchildren.
I often asked myself why it was that, with this capacity of daring
and endurance, they had not kept the land in a perpetual flame of
insurrection; why, especially since the opening of the war, they had
kept so still. The answer was to be found in the peculiar temperament of
the races, in their religious faith, and in the habit of patience that
centuries had fortified. The shrewder men all said substantially the
same thing. What was the use of insurrection, where everything was
against them? They had no knowledge, no money, no arms, no drill, no
organization,--above all, no mutual confidence. It was the tradition
among them that all insurrections were always betrayed by somebody.
They had no mountain passes to defend like the Maroons of Jamaica,--no
unpenetrable swamps, like the Maroons of Surinam. Where they had these,
even on a small scale, they had used them,--as in certain swamps round
Savannah and in the everglades of Florida, where they united with the
Indians, and would stand fire--so I was told by General Saxton, who had
fought them there--when the Indians would retreat.
It always seemed to me that, had I been a slave, my life would have been
one long scheme of insurrection. But I learned to respect the patient
self-control of those who had waited till the course of events should
open a better way. When it came they accepted it. Insurrection on their
part would at once have divided the Northern sentiment; and a large part
of our army would have joined with the Southern army to hunt them down.
By their waiting till we needed them, their freedom was secured.
Two things chiefly surprised me in their feeling toward their former
masters,--the absence of affection and the absence of revenge. I
expected to find a good deal of the patriarchal feeling. It always
seemed to me a very
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