[
540]
General Gordon, in the testimony cited above, said:
The very kindliest relations exist between the old masters and their former servants.
I could give, from my own personal knowledge, instances of the very tenderest expressions of kindness and enthusiastic demonstrations of love on the part of negroes for their old masters.
In one case, a body-servant of mine came a long distance to see me. After having been captured by the Federal army in Georgia, and staying with them for months, he came back to me just after the surrender, and told me he preferred to serve me rather than have his freedom, if he must be separated from me, though he wanted his freedom.
His wife was my wife's chambermaid.
She wanted to go with me to Brunswick.
She had been raised by my wife, and had been raised very much as my wife was. I had paid an enormous price for her husband after my marriage, so as to have him with his wife.
I had been offered $2,500 for him, which I had refused to take.
I would not have sold him at all, any more than I would have sold my brother.
These two negroes were anxious to go with us to Brunswick, but I had but little money, and was unable to take them.
On my return to that portion of Georgia, two years afterward, I walked from my father's house a mile before breakfast to their little cabin to see them.
When I got to the door the woman was sitting at the breakfast-table.
As I opened the door she was in the act of drinking coffee from a saucer.
In her excitement at seeing me, she let the saucer fall upon the floor, sprang to me, gathered me in her arms, and sank at my feet, crying: “Massa John, I never knew who my friends were before.”
These are two instances from the associations of two leading Confederates.
Take another, from General Lee's life, to show the Caleb Balderstone sort of devotion with which these house servants used to guard their masters' interests.--It is from
Personne's “pamphlet, and relates to the last year of the war, when provisions were scarce, and the
General himself only had meat twice a week:
Having invited a number of gentlemen to dine with him, the commander-in-chief, in a fit of extravagance, ordered a sumptuous repast of cabbage and middling.
The dinner was served, and, behold, a great pile of cabbage, and a bit of middling, about four inches long and two inches across.
The guests, with commendable politeness, unanimously declined middling, and it remained in the dish untouched.
Next day, General Lee, remembering the delicate tid-bit that had been so providentially preserved, ordered his servant to bring him
that middling.
“The man hesitated, scratched his head, and finally owned up:” De fac is, Marse Robert, dat dar middlin‘ was borrowed middlin‘. We all didn't have nary a spec, so I done borrowed it, an‘ now I done paid it back to de man whar I got it from, sar.”
This servant was a true Southern family darkey, with all the pride of his connections in him. He was like the waiter at the
Southern hotel where the abolitionist lecturer put up, and who was so impassive and unresponsive to the enthusiast's praises of freedom and horror of slavery, that at last the latter cried: “Leave me!
leave me!
I cannot endure the spectacle of such obtuseness after such misfortune.
Go! I will not be waited upon by one who is a slave indeed!”
“Excuse me, master,” said the negro, “I'd like ”
