Works of Booker T. Washington - Booker T. Washington [160]
While the colored man was at work in Ohio the Union armies were declared victorious, the Civil War ended, and freedom came to him, as it did to four million other slaves.
When he was declared a free man by Abraham Lincoln's proclamation, Matthews still owed his former master, according to his ante-bellum contract, three hundred dollars. As Mr. Matthews told the story to me, he said that he was perfectly well aware that by Lincoln's proclamation he was released from all legal obligations, and that in the eyes of nine tenths of the world he was released from all moral obligations to pay his former master a single cent of the unpaid balance. But he said that he wanted to begin his life of freedom with a clean conscience. In order to do this, he walked from his home in Ohio, a distance of three hundred miles, much of the way over the mountains, and placed in his former master's hand every cent of the money that he had promised years before to pay him for his freedom.
Who will be brave enough to say that such a man is not fit to use the ballot, is not fit for citizenship?
SERGEANT WILLIAM H. CARNEY
DURING the Civil War in the course of the operations before the city of Charleston, South Carolina, it was decided to concentrate all the available forces of the Federal army on Fort Wagner on Morris Island, in order to bombard the fort, and then to charge it.
After an exhausting march, and without the troops having had time for food, the bombardment began. The line of battle was formed with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts assigned to the post of honor and danger, in front of the attacking column. Suddenly such a terrific fire was opened on the regiment when ascending the wall of the fort with full ranks that, using the words of Sergeant Carney, "they melted away almost instantly" before the enemy's fire.
During the attack, Colonel Robert G. Shaw, commanding the brigade, was killed. So disastrous was the fire that the brigade was compelled to retire; but Sergeant Carney, who was with the battalion in the lead of the storming column, and who, with the regimental colors, had pressed forward near the colonel leading the men over the ditch, planted the flag upon the parapet, and, lying down in order to get as much shelter as possible, for half an hour, until the second brigade came up, kept the colors up all the time. He received a severe wound in the head. When this brigade retired, he, creeping on his knees, having by this time received a wound in the thigh also, followed them, but still holding up the flag. Thus he held the flag over the wall of Fort Wagner during the conflict of two brigades, and received two wounds.
When he entered the field hospital where his wounded comrades were, they cheered him and the colors. Nearly exhausted from the loss of blood, he exclaimed: "Boys, the old flag never touched the ground!"
"RUFUS"
RECENTLY a colored man who lives not many miles from the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in Alabama, found that when he had harvested his cotton and paid all his debts he had about one hundred dollars remaining. This negro is now about sixty-five years of age, and of course spent a large portion of his early life in slavery. So far as book-learning is concerned, he is ignorant. Notwithstanding this, I have met few persons in all my acquaintance with whom I always feel that I can spend half an hour more profitably than with this seemingly uneducated member of my race. In his own community this man is known simply by the name of "Rufus."
On many occasions Rufus has talked with me about the need of education for young people. This subject seems to be continually in his thoughts.
After Rufus had harvested his crop, as I have said, and evidently had thought the matter over carefully, he appeared at my office one afternoon. As he entered