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for another day. But before nine oa clock, the next night, I put out and paddled over to Port Royal, too glad to get away.
The Yankee picket wasn't asleep, but challenged me before I got near the shore, and I told him right off, that I was a runaway nigger coming ashore for freedom. The secesh picket heard me, and after I got up the bank he hailed across, “Yanks, who have you got?”
Yankees say, “One of your fellows.”
“What you going to do with him?”
“Don't know: what you think best?”
“Cut him up for fish-bait.
He ain't good for nothing else.”
The gentleman who furnished the
Governor with this narrative, said,—
If there is a little of intelligence left in this degraded, slaveryrid-den State, I am very sure that such men—yes, men, God's freemen —as Jack Flowers possess more than a moiety thereof.
We have given the foregoing extracts from the correspondence of
Governor Andrew, believing that they would better illustrate the march of events, and the character of the
Governor, than any words of our own. Of course, there are many letters written by him, relating to the daily routine of his office, during the last six months of the year 1864, to which we have not recurred, but which speak of matters by no means void of general interest; yet it would not be proper to quote from them in this volume.
Many of them refer to living persons, and to events of which it would not be wise to speak now. In the preceding pages, we have brought the
Governor's correspondence down to Jan. 1, 1865; the eventful year in which the
Rebellion was conquered, and victory rested upon our standards.
The year 1864 was the presidential year.
A Republican National Convention was held in the city of
Baltimore, at which
Abraham Lincoln was nominated for re-election for
President of the
United States, and
Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee, was nominated for
Vice-President.
The convention was composed of the leading men of the party,—men who had, from the beginning of the
Rebellion, never faltered or hesitated in their determination to suppress the
Rebellion, and to make no compromise or concession with the enemy until he had laid down his arms.
The resolutions or platform of the convention accorded with