was the
correct one. Your historians will tell you that the situation was
extraordinary and full of peril. Well, extraordinary, if you will, but
not perilous. Gabriel could never be brought to believe that there was
anything to be dreaded in the attitude of the blacks. What he scored
himself for in the days to come was that his interest in the matter
never rose above the idle curiosity of a boy.

And yet there were some developments calculated to pique curiosity. A
few years before the war, one of Madame Awtry's nephews from
Massachusetts came in to the neighbourhood preaching freedom to the
negroes. As a result, a large body of the Clopton negroes gathered
around the house one morning with many breathings and mutterings. Uncle
Plato, the carriage-driver, went to his master with a very grave face,
and announced that the hands, instead of going to work, had come in a
body to the house.

"Well, go and see what they want, Plato," said the master of the Clopton
Place.

"I done ax um dat, suh," replied Uncle Plato, "an' dey say p'intedly dat
dey want ter see you."

"Very well; where is Mr. Sanders?"

"He out dar, suh, makin' fun un um."

When Meriwether Clopton went out, he was told by old man Isaiah, the
foreman of the field-hands, that the boys didn't want to be "Bledserd."
It was some time before the master could understand what the old man
meant, but Mr. Sanders finally made it clear, and Meriwether Clopton
sent the negroes about their business with a promise that none of them
should ever be "Bledserd" by his consent.

A year or two before this "rising" occurred, General Jesse Bledsoe had
died leaving a will, by the terms of which all his negroes were given
their freedom, and provision was made for their transportation to a free
State. But the General had relatives, who put in their claims, and
succeeded in breaking the will, with the result that many of the negroes
were carried to the West and Southwest, bringing about a wholesale
separation of families, the first that had ever occurred in that
section. The impression it made on both whites and negroes was a lasting
one. In the minds of the blacks, freedom was only another name for
"Bledserin'."

Nevertheless, when, after the collapse of the Confederacy and the advent
of Sherman's army, the Clopton negroes were told that they were free, a
large number of them joined the restless, migratory throng that passed
to and fro along the public highway, some coming, s