him to offer the services of himself and his sons, in a published communication, to the cause of Virginia and the Confederate States.  The artifice did not succeed.  He lost his hold on his congregation, and could not have safely remained after the whites left.  He felt uneasy about his betrayal, and tried to restore himself to favor by saying that he meant no harm to his people; but his protestations were in vain.  His was the deserved fate of those in all ages who, victims of folly or bribes, turn their backs on their fellows.

Notwithstanding all these attempts, the negroes, with rare exceptions, still believed that the Yankees were their friends.  They had learned something in Presidential elections, and they thought their masters could not hate us as they did, unless we were their friends.  They believed that the troubles would somehow or other help them, although they did not understand all that was going on.  They may be pardoned for their want of apprehension, when some of our public men, almost venerable, and reputed to be very wise and philosophical, are bewildered and grope blindly.  They were somewhat perplexed by the contradictory statements of our soldiers, some of whom, according to their wishes, said the contest was for them, and others that it did not concern them at all and they would remain as before.  If it was explained to them, that Lincoln was chosen by a party who were opposed to extending slavery, but who were also opposed to interfering with it in Virginia,—­that Virginia and the South had rebelled, and we had come to suppress the rebellion,—­and although the object of the war was not to emancipate them, yet that might be its result,—­they answered, that they understood the statement perfectly.  They did not seem inclined to fight, although willing to work.  More could not be expected of them while nothing is promised to them.  What latent inspirations they may have remains to be seen.  They had at first a mysterious dread of fire-arms, but familiarity is rapidly removing that.

The religious element of their life has been noticed.  They said they had prayed for this day, and God had sent Lincoln in answer to their prayers.  We used to overhear their family devotions, somewhat loud according to their manner, in which they prayed earnestly for our troops.  They built their hopes of freedom on Scriptural examples, regarding the deliverance of Daniel from the lions’ den, and of the Three Children from the furnace, as symbolic of their coming freedom.  One said to me, that masters, before they died, by their wills sometimes freed their slaves, and he thought that a type that they should become free.