NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA.
131
CHAPTER XXVI.
INCIDENTS OF THE WAR.
Rodman's Point, N. C, was the scene of a
brave deed by a Negro. A flat-boat full of troops,
with a few colored soldiers among them, tried to
land at this place. The Confederate soldiers were
lying in wait for the boat, and the soldiers in it could
only save themselves by lying flat on the bottom
out of reach of their deadly guns. But if the boat
remained where it was very long it would be sur¬
rounded and captured. One of the colored soldiers
saw the danger, and knowing the boat must be
pushed off or all would be killed, suddenly rose up
and said: " Somebody got to die to get us all out
dis 'ere, and it mout jes as well be me as anybody !"
Saying this he deliberately stepped on shore and
pushed the boat off. The men in the bottom were
saved, but the Negro hero's body " fell forward into
the end of the boat, pierced by five bullets." He
had done what no other of them dared do to save
the lives of his comrades.
A Negro Established a Clothes-line Tele¬
graph in the Falmouth camp on the Rappahannock
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