upon the rebels. She replied it was only the salute of Gen. Kelly. At
night her husband came home with the news that Camp Jackson was taken
and all the soldiers prisoners. Mrs. Lewis asked how the Union
soldiers could take seven hundred men when they only numbered the
same. Mr. L. replied they had seven thousand. She was much astonished,
and cast her eye around to us for fear we might hear her. Her
suspicion was correct; there was not a word passed that escaped our
listening ears. My mother and myself could read enough to make out the
news in the papers. The Union soldiers took much delight in tossing a
paper over the fence to us. It aggravated my mistress very much. My
mother used to sit up nights and read to keep posted about the war. In
a few days my mistress came down to the kitchen again with another
bitter complaint that it was a sad affair that the Unionists had taken
their delicate citizens who had enlisted and made prisoners of
them--that they were babes. My mother reminded her of taking Fort
Sumpter and Major Anderson and serving them the same and that turn
about was fair play. She then hastened to her room with the speed of a
deer, nearly unhinging every door in her flight, replying as she went
that the Niggers and Yankees were seeking to take the country. One
day, after she had visited the kitchen to superintend some domestic
affairs, as she pretended, she became very angry without a word being
passed, and said--"I think it has come to a pretty pass, that old
Lincoln, with his long legs, an old rail splitter, wishes to put the
Niggers on an equality with the whites; that her children should never
be on an equal footing with a Nigger. She had rather see them dead."
As my mother made no reply to her remarks, she stopped talking, and
commenced venting her spite on my companion servant. On one occasion
Mr. Lewis searched my mother's room and found a picture of President
Lincoln, cut from a newspaper, hanging in her room. He asked her what
she was doing with old Lincoln's picture. She replied it was there