From the best knowledge I could obtain, the negroes in Hampton had rarely been severely whipped.  A locust-tree in front of the jail had been used for a whipping-post, and they were very desirous that it should be cut down.  It was used, however, only for what are known there as flagrant offences, like running away.  Their masters, when in ill-temper, had used rough language and inflicted chance blows, but no one ever told me that he had suffered from systematic cruelty or been severely whipped, except Joe, whose character I have given.  Many of them bore testimony to the great kindness of their masters and mistresses.

Separations of families had been frequent.  Of this I obtained definite knowledge.  When I was registering the number of dependants, preparatory to the requisition for rations, the answer occasionally was, “Yes, I have a wife, but she is not here.”  “Where is she?” “She was sold off two years ago, and I have not heard of her since.”  The husband of the woman who took care of the quarters of General Pierce had been sold away from her some years before.  Such separations are regarded as death, and the slaves re-marry.  In some cases the bereft one—­so an intelligent negro assured me—­pines under his bereavement and loses his value; but so elastic is human nature that this did not appear to be generally the case.  The same answer was given about children,—­that they had been sold away.  This, in a slave-breeding country, is done when they are about eight years old.  Can that be a mild system of servitude which permits such enforced separations?  Providence may, indeed, sunder forever those dearest to each other, and the stricken soul accepts the blow as the righteous discipline of a Higher Power; but when the bereavement is the arbitrary dictate of human will, there are no such consolations to sanctify grief and assuage agony.

There is a universal desire among the slaves to be free.  Upon this point my inquiries were particular, and always with the same result.  When we said to them, “You don’t want to be free,—­your masters say you don’t,”—­they manifested much indignation, answering, “We do want to be free,—­we want to be for ourselves.”  We inquired further, “Do the house slaves who wear their master’s clothes want to be free?” “We never heard of one who did not,” was the instant reply.  There might be, they said, some half-crazy one who did not care to be free, but they had never seen one.  Even old men and women, with crooked backs, who could hardly walk or see, shared the same feeling.  An intelligent Secessionist, Lowry by name, who was examined at head-quarters, admitted that a majority of the slaves wanted to be free.  The more intelligent the slave and the better he had been used, the stronger this desire seemed to be.  I remember one such particularly, the most intelligent one in Hampton, known as “an, influential darky” ("darky” being the familiar term applied by the contrabands to themselves).  He