was a coward and an incompetent; the son, always cautiously
distant from the scene of hostilities, was the tormentor of those whom
the fortunes of war, and the arms of brave men threw into his hands.

Winder gazed at us stonily for a few minutes without speaking, and,
turning, rode out again.

Our troubles, from that hour, rapidly increased.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PLANTATION NEGROS--NOT STUPID TO BE LOYAL--THEIR DITHYRAMBIC MUSIC
--COPPERHEAD OPINION OF LONGFELLOW.

The stockade was not quite finished at the time of our arrival--a gap of
several hundred feet appearing at the southwest corner. A gang of about
two hundred negros were at work felling trees, hewing legs, and placing
them upright in the trenches. We had an opportunity--soon to disappear
forever--of studying the workings of the "peculiar institution" in its
very home. The negros were of the lowest field-hand class, strong, dull,
ox-like, but each having in our eyes an admixture of cunning and
secretiveness that their masters pretended was not in them. Their
demeanor toward us illustrated this. We were the objects of the most
supreme interest to them, but when near us and in the presence of a white
Rebel, this interest took the shape of stupid, open-eyed, open-mouthed
wonder, something akin to the look on the face of the rustic lout, gazing
for the first time upon a locomotive or a steam threshing machine.
But if chance threw one of them near us when he thought himself
unobserved by the Rebels, the blank, vacant face lighted up with an
entirely different expression. He was no longer the credulous yokel who
believed the Yankees were only slightly modified devils, ready at any
instant to return to their original horn-and-tail condition and snatch
him away to the bluest kind of perdition; he knew, apparently quite as
well as his master, that they were in some way his friends and allies,
and he lost no opportunity in communicating his appreciation of that
fact, and of offering his services in any possible way. And these offers
were sincere. It is the testimony of every Union prisoner in the South
that he was never betrayed by or disappointed in a field-negro, but could
always approach any one of them with perfect confidence in his extending
all the aid in his power, whether as a guide to escape, as sentinel to
signal danger, or a purveyor of food. These services were frequently
attended with the greatest personal risk, but they were none the less