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for his family, commencing in May 1864, in Pitt St
between Calhoun & Vanderhost Sts, and in the follow-
ing November he moved to our farm where he remained
until February, two days before the city was occupied
by the Federal troops. Our furnitures had been left
stored away in one room of the Pitt St house which was
locked, and it there had a narrow escape from being
taken by the federal soldiers who searched in every di-
rection for chairs, tables, bedsteads and other necessary
things which they required for the empty dwellings into
which they had moved. The lady then living in the house
made some excuse to the federal sergeant who inquired
for the furniture which he had been told was there, for not
having the key of the room, and immediately afterwards
notified the owners of the importance of removing every-
thing without delay. In this way everything was rescued
from the clutches of the enemy, and when I entered our dwelling in Gibbes St
it looked as though nothing in the form of cruel war
had ever disturbed the serenity of its precincts.
The family had many anecdotes to tell of the beha-
viour of the servants as the day of their freedom was ap-
proaching. They were more communicative of their plans
to the French maid than to my sisters, and the new
masters of the city having given out that all unoccupied
dwellings not wanted for the military could be occupied
by the blacks, there was a rush for these by the latter who
soon found, especially the women, that to play the fine lady,
as they had seen their mistresses do, required a great deal
more than merely an empty house.
The negroes on the whole behaved fairly well to those who
had owned them, after their emancipation. They soon saw
that law and order would be enforced at any cost, and
the men of certain of the federal regiments seemed to
have an unconquerable aversion to them, having killed
with their bayonets, it was said, quite a number on sev-
eral succeeding Saturday nights in the market and the
streets around. A New York regiment was ordered off else-
where on account of its brutality to the blacks, and, after
my return, a regiment of New York Zouaves bayoneeted
to death several in the market on a Saturday evening.
It must have puzzled the poor darky just then
to know who was really his friend, the one who had held
him in bondage or the one who had removed his shackles.
With regard to the amount of informa-
tion possessed by the slaves concerning the agitation at the
North in favor of their emancipation, it seems to have va-
ried according to location. In the border states it was
doubtless generally known among them that such efforts
were being made, and the arrangements for receiving runaway
slaves in the border Northern States and hurrying them
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