Presently a double row of common negro quarters came in sight, and at their end a white frame house, by no means palatial, but still considerably larger than most of the residences to be found even on the premises of wealthy planters. The road led us up to the back door. “Massa allus meant to turn de road, and bring it roun’ in front, under dem trees,” explained an old negro. Entering at the back gate, and coming “roun’ in front,” we found a little lawn, on which a partially abortive attempt had been made to grow shade-trees and shrubbery. The house was a narrow one, having but a single story, with a hall running through the middle, and a couple of medium-sized rooms opening into it on either side. Beyond these, on each hand, was a wing, containing smaller rooms. In front was a veranda, or, as Southerners all call it, a gallery, with pretentious wooden columns; and at either wing was another gallery, with more columns. Above the central piazza was wrought, in sprigs of cedar, a soldier’s inscription, drawn from nursery recollections: “The house that Jeff. built;” and over the main door a few more sprigs of evergreen, prettily arranged, spelled out the last word the master of the house would have uttered to any of its recent visitors: “Welcome.” A couple of Yankee school-mistresses were within, and they were the teachers of the boys and girls of Mr. Davis’ slaves, and of the runaways from plantations in the interior, to whom the welcome was given. A beautiful little quadroon girl, with clustering ringlets and wondering face, stood in the doorway. She was one of the children of the place, and was the offspring of no Northern “miscegenation.”[37] All the furniture belonging to the house had long ago been carried off. Respect for the rights of absent property owners has nowhere been a very marked characteristic of the movements of the Northern armies; and articles from the “house of Jeff. Davis hisself,” as one of the soldiers phrased it, were too tempting to be long left unappropriated. Odd pieces of furniture of the most incongruous styles had been gathered up from adjacent plantations, completing as motley an establishment as ever vexed the eye of Yankee housekeeper. A few books lay scattered over the shelves; tactics for Northern soldiers and spelling-books for slaves lying among defenses of the divine right of slavery and constitutional arguments in favor of repudiation and secession.