Of all the thousands of Negroes who went out as servants with their masters, I have never heard of one who deserted to the North, and I have known of many who had abundant opportunity to do so. Some were captured, but escaped; others apparently deserted, but returned laden with spoils. My father’s body-servant, Ralph Woodson, served with him throughout the entire war. While at Petersburg, where the armies were within a mile of each other, he was punished for getting drunk and he ran away. But instead of making for the Union lines and surrendering to a Union picket, which he could easily have done, he started for home, sixty miles away. He was, however, arrested as a straggler or runaway, and my father, hearing of him, sent and brought him back to camp, where he remained to the end. An even more notable instance which has come to my knowledge was that of Simon, the servant of a friend of mine. He disappeared from camp during the Spottsylvania campaign, and just when his master had given him up he reappeared with a sack full of all sorts of things, useful for the mess, which he declared “dem gent’mens on the other side had gin him.” He had borrowed of the Egyptians. The letters and annals of the time are full of references to the singular, but then well-known fact, that while the people of the South gave their sons joyfully to the cause, they were most unwilling to allow their Negroes to go. The reason for this has been much misapprehended. It has been generally supposed outside that it was because they were afraid to lose their property. Nothing could be more unfounded. They were afraid their servants might be hurt or suffer some harm. Fathers who wrote their sons to be always at the post of honor, would give them explicit directions how to keep their servants out of danger. The war in some way was concerned with the perpetuation of slavery, and it was felt that it was not just to expose slaves to danger when such was the case. Something of this same feeling played its part in the decision not to enlist Negroes in the army of the Confederacy. In the field they showed both courage and sagacity, and many are the instances in which, when their masters were wounded and left on the field, they hunted for them through scenes which tested men’s courage as much as the battle itself. The records of the time are full of such instances. V When the war closed and the Negroes were set free, the feeling between them and their old masters was never warmer, the bonds of friendship were never more close. The devotion which the Negro had shown during the long struggle had created a profound impression on the minds of the Southern whites. Even between the Negroes and poorer whites, who had always been rather at enmity, a better feeling had grown up. The close of the war had accomplished what all the emancipation proclamations could not effect. Their masters universally informed their servants that they were free.