Note 12 — Chapter I · SLAVERY AND THE OLD RELATION BETWEEN THE SOUTHERN WHITES AND BLACKS

The writer never heard of a body-servant deserting, and he knows of sundry instances when they had abundant opportunity. In some cases they would vanish for days and then reappear, laden with spoils that they had gotten from the enemy. The body-servant of the writer’s father, having been punished for some dereliction of duty while before Petersburg, in 1865, ran away, but though he could easily have crossed through the lines not three miles away, he walked sixty miles and came home.