The commanders who made such orders uniformly suffered from
doing it; for the temper of the volunteer army was such that the
orders were looked upon as evidence of sympathy with the rebellion,
and destroyed the usefulness of the general by creating an incurable
distrust of him among his own men. Yet nearly all the department
commanders felt obliged at first, by what they regarded as the
letter of the law, to order that fugitive slaves claimed by loyal
citizens should be arrested, if within the camps, and delivered up.
Within the district of the Kanawha I tried to avoid the difficulty
by stringent orders that slaves should be kept out of the camps; but
I declined to order the troops to arrest and return them. I had two
little controversies on the subject, and in both of them I had to
come in collision with Colonel Benjamin Smith. After they were over
we became good friends, but the facts are too important an
illustration of the war-time and its troubles to be omitted.
The first raised the question of "contraband." A negro man was
brought into my camp by my advance-guard as we were following Floyd
to Sewell Mountain in September. He was the body-servant of Major
Smith, and had deserted the major, with the intention of getting
back to his family at Charleston.
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