I remember my father’s return from Appomattox. For days he had been watched for. Appomattox was less than a hundred miles from our home. The news of the surrender had come to us first through one of the wagon-drivers, who told it weeping. I seem to see the return now—my father on his gray horse, with his body-servant, Ralph, behind him. I remember the way in which, as he slipped from his horse, he put his hand over his face to hide his tears, and his groan, “I never expected to come home so.” All were weeping. A few minutes later he came out on the porch and said: “Ralph, you are free; take the saddles off and turn the horses out.” He had carried a silver half-dollar all through the war, saving it till the last pinch. This had come when he reached the river on his way home. The ferryman had declined to take Confederate money, and he paid him his half-dollar to ferry him across. Such was the end of slavery, the institution which had divided this country in twain, and finally had convulsed it and brought on a terrible war. When the end of slavery came there was, doubtless, some heart-burning, but the transition was accomplished without an outbreak, and well-nigh without one act of harshness or even of rudeness. If there was jubilation among the Negroes on the plantation it was not known to the Whites. In fact the Negroes were rather mystified. The sudden coming of that for which they had possibly hoped, with the loom of the unknown future, had sobered at least the elders. Their owners, almost without exception, conveyed to them the information of their freedom, which thus had a more comprehensible security than could have been given by the acts of Congress, or the orders of military authorities. In some cases the old Negroes sought and held long conferences with their mistresses or masters in which the whole matter was canvassed. In every instance the assurance was given them that they should live on the old plantations, if they wished to do so and were still willing to work and would obey orders. As was natural, the Negroes, in the first flush of freedom, left the estates and went off “for themselves,” as the phrase ran.[64] They flocked either to the cities, or to the nearest centre where a garrison of Union troops was posted, and where rations were distributed partly as a measure of necessity and partly from a philanthropic sentiment which had more or less ground for its existence. But after a time, many of them returned to work. Those of them who had anything shared what they had with their masters. Some of them brought eggs and chickens; others saved a part of the rations given by the Government.