for a few hours and then go where they pleased.  Some voluntarily left their slaves behind, not having the means to provide for them, or, anticipating a return at no distant day, desired them to stay and guard the property.  The slaves who remained lived upon the little pork and corn-meal that were left and the growing vegetables.  They had but little to do.  The women looked after their meagre household concerns, but the men were generally idle, standing in groups, or sitting in front of the shanties talking with the women.  Some began to serve our officers as soon as we were quartered in the town,—­while a few others set up cake-stands upon the street.

It was necessary for the protection of the post that some breastworks should be thrown up, and a line was planned extending from the old cemetery northward to the new one, a quarter of a mile distant.  Our own troops were disinclined to the labor, their time being nearly expired, and they claiming that they had done their share of fatigue duty both at the fort and at Newport News.  A member of Brigadier-General Pierce’s staff—­an efficient officer and a humane gentleman—­suggested the employment of the contrabands and the furnishing of them with rations, an expedient best for them and agreeable to us.  He at once dictated a telegram to General Butler in these words:—­“Shall we put the contrabands to work on the intrenchments, and will you furnish them with rations?” An affirmative answer was promptly received on Monday morning, July 8th, and that was the first day in the course of the war in which the negro was employed upon the military works of our army.  It therefore marks a distinct epoch in its progress and in its relations to the colored population.  The writer—­and henceforth his narrative must indulge in the frequent use of the first person—­was specially detailed from his post as private in Company L of the Third Regiment to collect the contrabands, record their names, ages, and the names of their masters, provide their tools, superintend their labor, and procure their rations.  My comrades smiled, as I undertook the novel duty, enjoying the spectacle of a Massachusetts Republican converted into a Virginia slave-master.  To me it seemed rather an opportunity to lead them from the house of bondage never to return.  For, whatever may be the general duty to this race, to all such as we have in any way employed to aid our armies our national faith and our personal honor are pledged.  The code of a gentleman, to say nothing of a higher law of rectitude, necessitates protection to this extent.  Abandoning one of these faithful allies, who, if delivered up, would be reduced to severer servitude because of the education he had received and the services he had performed, probably to be transported to the remotest slave region as now too dangerous to remain near its borders, we should be accursed among the nations of the earth.  I felt assured that from that hour, whatsoever the fortunes of the war, every one of those enrolled defenders of the Union had vindicated beyond all future question, for himself, his wife, and their issue, a title to American citizenship, and become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.