This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter
47
: freedmen's aid societies and an act of congress creating a Bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands
Chapter
55
:
first
appropriation by congress for the bureau; the reconstruction Act,
March
2
,
1867
; increase of educational work
Chapter
60
: opposition to Bureau and reconstruction work became personal; the
Congregational Church of
Washington
Chapter
62
: life in
Washington, D. C.
,
1866
to
1874
; assigned to duty in regular army as commander,
Department of the Columbia
Chapter
63
: in the
Northwest
, among the
Indians
; trip to
Alaska
; life in
Portland, Ore.
;
1874
to
1881
Chapter
64
: superintendent of the
United States military Academy
; commanding
Department of the Platte
,
Omaha, Neb.
Chapter
68
:
French
army maneuvers,
1884
; promotion to
Major General
,
United States army
,
San Francisco
1886
-
88
[167] abolitionists, were that same day with me for a short time. They condemned my apparent hesitancy in strong terms. “You should pay no attention whatever to such uncalled — for orders,” they said. After that I was hopeful that I should have no more slave cases to deal with. But soon after this, there was led in a large, dark fellow, with the thickest of lips and the broadest of noses, whose utterance was hard for one uninitiated to understand. “How did you get past the picket?” I asked. “I thorounded um, thir.” He, too, found the Potomac and freedom. A man who could surround a picket was smart enough to reach and pass Mason and Dixon's line. There were other commanders on our front lines in the East and the West who more fully carried out their instructions; so that, for a time, hundreds of escaping slaves who had come in, full of the hope of freedom, were caught as in a net and given up to men and women who visited the camps and laid claim to them; such visitors were permitted to carry their servants back to bondage, and sometimes soldiers were sent to escort the fugitives on their return. All the armies of the Union were then in a great ferment on this subject. General H. W. Halleck, in the West, prohibited the slaves from “entering the lines of any camp or any column on the march.” General Thomas Williams in the far South at Baton Rouge gave equally decisive instructions; but on the other hand General John C. Fremont, in Missouri, August 31, 1861, attempted by public orders to confiscate the property of all citizens in rebellion and establish the freedom of their slaves. As this action was in advance of President and
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