During our encampment at Hampton, I occupied much of my leisure time in conversations with the contrabands, both at their work and in their shanties, endeavoring to collect their currents of thought and feeling. It remains for me to give the results, so far as any could be arrived at.
There were more negroes of unmixed African blood than we expected to find. But many were entirely bleached. One man, working on the breastworks, owned by his cousin, whose name he bore, was no darker than white laborers exposed by their occupation to the sun, and could not be distinguished as of negro descent. Opposite our quarters was a young slave woman who had been three times a mother without ever having been a wife. You could not discern in her three daughters, either in color, feature, or texture of hair, the slightest trace of African lineage. They were as light-faced and fair-haired as the Saxon slaves whom the Roman Pontiff, Gregory the Great, met in the markets of Rome. If they were to be brought here and their pedigree concealed, they could readily mingle with our population and marry white men, who would never suspect that they were not pure Caucasians.
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.