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The loss of that important stronghold would be a great blow to the rebels. "You ask me, in your last letter, whether I see much of the contrabands. I have talked with a considerable number. One, a very intelligent fellow, had been very much trusted by his master, and had accompanied him to various parts of the South.
On Monday evening, July 15th, when the contrabands deposited their tools in the court-house, I requested them to stop a moment in the yard. I made each a present of some tobacco, which all the men and most of the women use.
"All Colored Persons called Contrabands, employed as servants by officers and others residing within Fort Monroe, or outside of the Fort at Camp Hamilton and Camp Butler, will be furnished with their subsistence and at least eight dollars per month for males, and four dollars per month for females, by the officers or others thus employing them.
In the mean time I secured the valuable services of some fellow-privates, one for a quarter-master, two others to aid in superintending at the trenches, and the orderly-sergeant of my own company, whose expertness in the drill was equalled only by his general good sense and business capacity. Upon the ringing of the bell, about forty contrabands came to the yard.
One of them wished me to board at his residence, and I was, after a time, invited out to dinner and tea frequently. The negroes remained in Warrenton, in great numbers, and held carnival of evenings when the bands played. "Contrabands" were coming daily into town, and idleness and vice soon characterized the mass of them.
Weighing the question historically and reflectively, and anticipating the capture of Richmond and New Orleans, there need be more serious apprehension of the conduct of some of our own troops recruited in large cities than of a regiment of contrabands officered and disciplined by white men.
Old lady Bowdoin had left them; long since she had established her claim to the donation fund by arriving always first at breakfast, and had devoted it, triumphantly, to a fund for free negroes, "contrabands," as they were just then called. But Mrs. Bowdoin never had taken much interest in Mercedes. "Sure, they were last heard of there. He was on some filibustering expedition in Cuba.
Speaking of the manner in which a good many of the prisoners employed themselves in straw-plaiting of a very superior description, and how in course of time they thus competed in what was an employment of the English in certain neighbourhoods, Borrow gives the following ridiculous account of the manner in which the aid of British soldiery was invoked, to put a stop to the manufacture on the part of the poor prisoners: "Then those ruthless inroads, called in the story of the place straw plait hunts, when in pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a few of the necessaries of life, were in the habit of making, red-coat battalions were marched into the prison, who, with the bayonet's point, carried havoc and ruin into every convenience which ingenious wretchedness had been endeavouring to raise around it: and the triumphant exit with the miserable booty: and, worst of all, the accursed bonfire on the barrack parade of the plaited contrabands beneath the view of the glaring eye-balls from their lofty roofs, amidst the hurrahs of the troops, frequently drowned in the curses poured down from above like a tempest shower, or in the terrific whoop of 'Vive l'Empereur."
My man is very intelligent, and as I keep him in tobacco and greenbacks, I sometimes fancy that Headquarters does not always get the best out of the raids of these two contrabands." "I have profited by it, Penhallow. I have personal memories of that young roast pig, I think your man called it a shoat. Your corps must have caught it hard these last days. I suppose we are in for something unusual.
Let her go to the Post-Quartermaster and select a cow from his herd. Yesterday's operations gave the following total yield: Thirty 'contrabands, eighteen horses, eleven cattle, ten saddles and bridles, and one new army-wagon. At this rate we shall soon be self-supporting cavalry.
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