Peyton Hemingway finds wife remarried

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Sold Into Slavery.

The recent excoriation of Hon.
G. F. Hoar by Zeb Vance, of North
Carolina, in the United States Sen
ate, recalls many very remarkable
characteristics of the Puritanic
philosophy. That the good Bay
State first introduced slavery into
this country, found it unprofitable,
sold their slaves South, and then
sang the doxology through to long
metre, thanking God they were not
as other men, is not the most inter-
esting instance of the Yankee spirit
which first taught that it is "a good
think to be shifty in a new coun-
try."
There is this day living at Wino-
na, Miss., a thriving little city on
the Illinois Central Railroad, one
Peyton Hemingway, well known to
the writer hereof from boyhood.
Peyton is a ginger-bread fellow,
very active for his age, and was
for many years before the war the
chief fiddler at the big balls given
in all the country around about
among the hills and valleys of Car-
roll, Sunflower and adjoining coun-
ties. In 1861 he went as body ser-
vant to the theatre of war in Vir-
ginia with his young master, Hon.
W. L. Herrington of the Eleventh
Mississippi Regiment. at present
Mississippi's State Treasurer. He
remained faithful to the end, and
after the surrender of Lee and
Johnston and the general scatter-
meant of all the Southern troops,
white, black, and blue, (the blue

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predominating) Peyton was picked
up by the advance guard of Grant's
and Sherman's deliverers. Two or
three of these sons of Freedom
soon spirited Peyton on to the
coast where for $500 paid by the
agent of a Cuban planter he was
shipped off in chains to the Queen
of the Antilles all the same as if
such a thing as "shouting the bat-
tle cry of freedom" had never been
sung in the camp where were as-
sembled the hosts of the Lord's
children.
Arrived in Cuba, once more a
slave, Peyton toiled in de cotton
an' de cane from May, 1865 to 1880
---a period of fifteen years, which
to this colored Enoch Arden, who
had left wife and children behind
in Carroll county, Mississippi, seem-
ed as many centuries. His various
attempts to escape subjected him
to hard discipline at the hands of
his new master. Finally, in the
year 1880, he found a friend in
need who secreted him in the hold
of a vessel bound for New York.
He was a long time working his
way South. One morning, howev-
er, the crowd gathered about the
depot at Winona saw a gentleman
bound in yellow step from the train;
a large, fat "aunty" gathered him
in her arms and in the joyous
wrestling both hugger and hugee
felt the red dirt on the lofty em-
bankment slide from under their
feet, whereupon the long separated
pair rolled in each other's dusky
arms down the steep decline, their
children on top of them uttering
what the darkeys call "loud lamen-
tations ob joy."

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During the husband's fifteen
years' absence, his wife, like every
one else, thinking him dead, had
married again and become a widow
---so that the wedding bells were in
no respect "jangled, out of tune and
harsh" when the long lost put in
his appearance.
Peyton saw sights and heard
sounds and witnessed the Wallapus
in most romantic and remarkable
attitudes during his enforced exile.
He says that, immediately after the
war, many a confiding colored man
and woman were cajoled off by the
blue coated bummers, and sold in-
to Cuban slavery. He reports that
a number of gay Lotharios who had
marched with Sherman to the sea
and gyrated around with Grant,
wooed, won and wedded each a
wife of African descent, took her
lovingly on a bridal tour to Ha
vannah, delivered her over to the
slave owner for many pieces of sil-
ver, and left there in bondage to
weep the absence of he recreant
lord in tears that the hot savan-
nahs of the far-off isle drank down
in plenteous draught.
Such is the simple story as known
to thousands in North and Central
Mississippi. We would that Senator
Vance could have had these mea-
gre threads to weave into warp and
woof in which he emeshed the Hon.
George Frisbie Hoar. The reader
has the story; if any doubt of its
realism may linger in his mind a
letter of inquiry addressed to any
one at Winona, Mississippi, will
receive prompt attention and cor-
roboration. If Peyton Hemingway
has mastered the three R's---, he
would himself take pleasure in re-
sponding to the anxious who may
doubt the story. We commend it
Field Marshal, Murat Halstead
and his wicked partner, Deacon
Richard Smith, of the Cincinnati
--Commercial Gazette," that they
may "riot" in the record to their
utmost edification and delight.
--"Nashville World."