Page:A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry.djvu/130

 Federal officers call on them. The young ladies would sing and play the piano beautifully, and make things quite homelike for us after the routine of the day's work. Twenty years later, while passing through Fayetteville on my way to Atlanta, I received courtesies from a citizen who only knew me by reputation as one of the officers of the Third Wisconsin.

It was curious to see what a difference slavery had made in the social life of these people. Everywhere work was considered disgraceful for a white man, and as only the occupation of the "nigger." In order to succeed socially, it was necessary to own slaves. The idea of hiring labor, or of being rich without negroes, was apparently incomprehensible. And in fact it was true that all of the people who had obtained any sort of success, intellectually or otherwise, had owned slaves.

Most of the men who resided in the vicinity had served in the Confederate army. Some had been discharged on account of wounds or sickness, while others, and probably most of them, had deserted when they became sure that the fight was hopeless.