het of Israel records the denunciations
by Jehovah of sword, pestilence, and famine against the Jews for not
proclaiming liberty to their servants and handmaids. He had not known
before that there were such passages in the Bible.

The conversations of the contrabands on their title to be regarded as
freemen showed reflection. When asked if they thought themselves fit for
freedom, and if the darkies were not lazy, their answer was, "Who
but the darkies cleared all the land round here? Yes, there are lazy
darkies, but there are more lazy whites." When told that the free blacks
had not succeeded, they answered that the free blacks have not had a
fair chance under the laws,--that they don't dare to enforce their
claims against white men,--that a free colored blacksmith had a thousand
dollars due to him from white men, but he was afraid to sue for any
portion of it. One man, when asked why he ought to be free, replied,--"I
feed and clothe myself and pay my master one hundred and twenty dollars
a year; and the one hundred and twenty dollars is just so much taken
from me, which ought to be used to make me and my children comfortable."
Indeed, broken as was their speech and limited as was their knowledge,
they reasoned abstractly on their rights as well as white men. Locke or
Channing might have fortified the argument for universal liberty from
their simple talk. So true is it that the best thoughts which the human
intellect has produced have come, not from affluent learning or ornate
speech, but from the original elements of our nature, common to all
races of men and all conditions in life; and genius the highest and most
cultured may bend with profit to catch the lowliest of human utterances.

There was a very general desire among the contrabands to know how to
read. A few had learned; and these, in every instance where we inquired
as to their teacher, had been taught on the sly in their childhood by
their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put
them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing
a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a
door-step with her primer before her, trying to make progress.

In natural tact and the faculty of getting a livelihood the contrabands
are inferior to the Yankees, but quite equal to the mass of the Southern
population. It is not easy to see why they would be less industrious, if
free, than the whites, particularly as they w