We also took satisfaction in enforcing the law which freed the "contrabands" who were employed by their masters in any service within the Confederate armies.

These principles were generally understood and acquiesced in by the West Virginians; but it was impossible to come to any agreement in regard to fugitive slaves who took refuge in our camps.

The soldiers and many of the officers would encourage the negroes to assert their freedom, and would resist attempts to recapture them.

The owners, if Union men, would insist that the fugitives should be apprehended and restored to them by military authority.

This was simply impossible, for the public sentiment of the army as a whole was so completely with the slaves that any such order would have been evaded and made a farcical dead letter.