Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/22

 It was the natural result that the camps of the Union army should at once become cities of refuge for fugitive slaves. A New England general, who had been in close political alliance with the slave power until it raised its hand to strike down the Union, gave them a name and a recognised standing in the military lines as "contraband of war." And by and by there came from the good President who had so patiently bided the time, the proclamation that made the army, in the aim as well as the incident of its work, an army of emancipation.

Its advance was the signal for a rally of slaves from all the country round to follow it, they knew not whither, save that it was to freedom. They flocked in upon the line of march by bridle-paths and across the fields; old men on crutches, babies on their mothers' backs; women wearing the cast-off blue jackets of Yankee cavalry men, boys in abbreviated trowsers of rebel grey; sometimes lugging a bundle of household goods snatched from their cabins as they fled, sometimes riding an old mule "borrowed" from "mas'r," but oftener altogether empty-handed, with nothing whatever to show for their lifetime of unrewarded toil. But they were free; and with what swinging of ragged hats, and tumult of rejoicing hearts and fervent "God bless you's" they greeted their deliverers! "The year of jubilee," of which they had sung and for which they had prayed and waited so many years, had come at last!

By this violent emancipation of war—so different in its process from the peaceful abolition for which the friends of the slave had been so long looking