ors, black though they were, piloted many a white soldier, escaped from Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby prison, through swamps and mountain passes to the Union lines, thus repaying all the time and treasure that had been expended in their behalf by this institution. Indeed, for this service, this branch of the U. G. R. R., with negro conductors, was more efficient than any red tape or military organization could have been made, as multitudes of escaped prisoners gratefully testify.
A few weeks after this I was reminded of what Jim said about those meetings in the night, by reading in one of our popular magazines an incident related by a slaveholder to a gentleman who was visiting at his plantation in the sea island cotton region. The slaveholder, whose name was Poindexter, said to his friend, Mr. Hill, “I am exceedingly perplexed about what course to pursue in relation to my negroes. I was surprised, and not a little amused, by what I saw last night. My boy Tom oversees all my hands on this plantation, is the best manager in the county, makes the best crops with the least trouble ; he never whips, and there is no skulking and no sham sickness. He is a Baptist preacher, and all the slaves for miles around come every Sunday to hear him preach. There is, as Tom says, ‘a powerful revival’ in these parts, and he has many times during the past month asked for a pass to go to an island near at hand to hold a meeting in the night, and as he is always on hand in the morning, I usually let him go. Having noticed an unusual sadness in Tom’s countenance of late, and other things in his deportment that seemed peculiar, my curiosity was excited, and I concluded to follow him last night to witness his manner of holding his meeting. He crossed the narrow inlet to the island on the trunk of a fallen tree, and instead of going to-
