A Boy's Experience in the Civil War, 1860-1865

This company of negroes comprised about fifty or sixty men, about 25 or 30 years of age, were almost entirely dark mulattoes, wore no uniforms, indeed few soldiers in the Confederacy wore uniforms except the officers and most of theirs were shabby and old. The striking peculiarity about this negro company was one that had appeared to possess the company of old men, namely that while evidencing interest in their drill it appeared to be for only momentary purposes and it all seemed to be viewed as without any subsequent purpose. And the peculiority about the negro company was that they appeared to regard themselves as isolated or out of place, as if engaged in a work not exactly in accord with their notions of self interest, no doubt attributable to the fact that their inclination must have been against engagtng on the Southern side. Their reward for enlistment I believe was to be freedom from slavery. The life of a free negro in a slave holding country was however not a very attractive one. He was usually shunned by the slaves, who were jealous of him and from whom he usually held aloof and the whites regarded him with suspicion as unreliable and indifferent. An incident occurred in my experience at the Capitol that may be regarded as of particular interest. I have a portion of the Confederate flag that floated over the Capitol, the Capitol of the Confederacy at the fall of Richmond. When last in Richmond the Librarian in the State Library upon my asking him what had become of the flag, showed me a small bundle of bunting lying in a glass book case and he said it was portions of the flag that people had brought back and given to the Library. I told him I had a piece but intended to retain it. Mine came into my hands in this wise. As my father was a member of the House of Delegates this gave me the run of the Capitol and I was intimate with the pages in the House. On one of our excursions through the building we went through the Library and through a garrets above and then through a trap door onto the roof, in returning I was last and lying on the roof, half inside the open trap door was the flag, at the end it had a slit about one inch long and wide and it was so suggestive that involuntarily almost I continued the slit for the flag's entire length and tearing the strip away, rolled it up and put it in my pocket. At another time I ran across the Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. Something attracted his attention to me. He regarded me with curious interest, I presume because a little boy was observing him so closely.