The Continental Monthly, Vol I, Issue I, January 1862, page 69 by Various Authors
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a negro driver at a livery-stable, and started off for the plantation.
I make this preliminary statement to give the reader a satisfactory reason for taking him over wretched roads, at so inclement a season, with no companion but an ebony Jehu, into the very heart of Secessiondom.
My companion was a very intelligent native African, of the name of Scipio, who 'hired his time' of his mistress, and obtained his living by doing odd jobs around the streets and wharves of Georgetown. Portions of the country through which we passed were almost as wild as the forests of Oregon, and in some places the feeling against the North and Northern travelers ran very high. I had some strange encounters with swollen streams and roaring secessionists, in which my negro driver was of great service to me; and the knowledge I thus gained of him led me for the first time to the opinion, that real elevation and nobility of character may exist under an ebony skin.
Our first day on the road was clear, sunshiny, and of delicious temperature--one of those days so peculiar to the Southern winter, when the blood bounds through every vein as if thrilled by electricity, and a man of lively temperament can scarcely restrain his legs from dancing a breakdown. Night found us thirty miles on our way, and under the roof of a hospitable planter. A storm came on with the going down of the sun, and lasted during the following day; but, desiring to arrive at my destination before the servant should set out to meet me, I decided to push on in the rain.
Our second day's travel was attended with sundry interruptions and adventures, and night overtook us in the midst of a forest, uncertain where we were, and half dead from exposure to the storm; but after several hours of hard riding, we found ourselves, drenched to the skin and benumbed with the cold, before the door of a one-story log cabin, tenanted by a family of
POOR WHITES.
The rain was falling in torrents, and the night was as 'dark as the darkest corner of t