They do not wish to trust their old masters on the plantations; and, without any definite purpose or plan, they have a blind, but touching instinct, that wherever the flag is floating it is a good place for friendless negroes to go.
Reid captures the instinctive movement of freed African Americans seeking safety and community under the flag, reflecting their desire for freedom.
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Extravagant living left nearly every planter enormously in debt when the war came.
They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out.
Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour?
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