so much as to read
the news; and they taxed their ingenuity to gratify us. They would
wait till the jailor or some of the guard had finished reading a
paper, and laid it down, and then slyly purloin it. When meal time
came, it would be put into the bottom of the pan in which our food was
brought, and thus handed in to us. The paper had to be returned in the
same way, to avoid suspicion.[5] The guards and officers would talk
with us, and always finding us possessed of a knowledge of the events
of the war, at least as far as the Southern papers gave it, came at
last to think we had an instinctive idea of news--something like what
the bee has of geometrical forms! They never suspected the negroes,
though for several months it was only through their instrumentality
that we could obtain any definite information of what was going on in
the world without.

[5] In one of these papers I noticed a description of two Federal
officers who had escaped from Macon, Georgia. It was Captain Geer,
with whom I have lectured in several places since my return, and his
comrade, Lieutenant Collins. Their adventures are recorded in a book
called "_Beyond the Lines_."

Having found the negroes thus intelligent and useful, far beyond what
I had supposed possible, I questioned them about other matters. They
were better informed than I had given them credit for, and knew enough
to disbelieve all the stories rebels told. When the whites were not
present, they laughed at the grand victories the papers were
publishing every day, but rather leaned to the opposite extreme, and
gave them less credit than was their due, for they would believe that
the Federal troops were always victorious. Even after McClellan's
repulse before Richmond, they continued, for weeks, to assure us that
he had the town, and had beaten the rebels in every engagement!

They imagined that all the Northern troops were chivalrous soldiers,
fighting for the universal rights of man, and, of course, they
esteemed it a high privilege to contribute to the comfort of such
noble men. Some of them had imbibed the idea, which is common with the
poor whites of the South, that Lincoln is a negro or a mulatto; but
most of them placed so little credit in the assertions of their
masters, that they disbelieved this story also. But they never wavered
in their belief that the Union troops would conquer, and that the
result of the victory would be their freedom. I had extensive
opportunities fo