ed from his
professional studies at the summons of Christian duty. He labored
faithfully as a superintendent, looking after the physical, moral, and
educational interests of his people. He had a difficult post, was
overburdened with labor, and perhaps had not the faculty of taking as
good care of himself as was even consistent with his duties. He came
home in the summer, commended the enterprise and his people to the
citizens and students of Andover, and returned. He afterwards fell ill,
and, again coming North, died October 30th, a few days after reaching
New York. The young woman who was betrothed to him, but whom he did not
live to wed, has since his death sought this field of labor; and on my
recent visit I found her upon the plantation where he had resided,
teaching the children whom he had first taught, and whose parents he had
guided to freedom. Truly, the age of Christian romance has not passed
away!

* * * * *

On the first of July, 1862, the administration of affairs at Port Royal
having been transferred from the Treasury to the War Department, the
charge of the freedmen passed into the hands of Brigadier-General Rufus
Saxton, a native of Massachusetts, who in childhood had breathed the
free air of the valley of the Connecticut, a man of sincere and humane
nature; and under his wise and benevolent care they still remain. The
Sea Islands, and also Fernandina and St. Augustine in Florida, are
within our lines in the Department of the South, and some sixteen or
eighteen thousand negroes are supposed to be under his jurisdiction.

The negroes of the Sea Islands, when found by us, had become an abject
race, more docile and submissive than those of any other locality. The
native African was of a fierce and mettlesome temper, sullen and
untamable. The master was obliged to abate something of the usual rigor
in dealing with the imported slaves. A tax-commissioner, now at Port
Royal, and formerly a resident of South Carolina, told me that a native
African belonging to his father, though a faithful man, would
perpetually insist on doing his work in his own way, and being asked the
threatening question, "A'n't you going to mind?" would answer, with
spirit, "No, a'n't gwine to!" and the master desisted! Severe discipline
drove the natives to the wilderness, or involved a mutilation of person
which destroyed their value for proprietary purposes. In 1816, eight
hundred of these refugees wer