so dogmatically
pronounced unfit for freedom, were in this respect models for those who
make high boasts of civility of manners and Christian culture. Out of
the sixty-four who worked for us, all but half a dozen were members of
the Church, generally the Baptist. 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. There was no
good reason to believe that he had already been tampered with by Rebels;
but his price could not be more than five dollars. He would be a
disturbing element among the laborers on the breastworks, and he was a
dangerous person to be so near the lines; we therefore sent him to the
fort. The last I heard of him, he was at the Rip Raps, bemoaning his
isolation, and the butt of our soldiers there, who charged him with
being a "Secesh," and confounded him by gravely asserting that they were
such themselves and had seen him with the "Secesh" at Yorktown. This was
the single goat among the sheep.

On Monday evening, July 15th, when the contrabands deposited their tools
in the court-house, I requested them to stop a moment in the yard. I
made each a present of some tobacco, which all the men and most of the
women us