sands of them. We heard that they were robbing the Confederates passing through (which proved to be untrue) and we sought the protection for the night of an encampment of a regiment. The colonel and his officers were kind and hospitable, set up a tent for us, dried my wet clothes and fed us. They even had out their band to play for us. The regiment was the Eighth United States Colored Troops, and the colonel, S. C. Armstrong, afterwards the General Armstrong of the Hampton Institute. Some years afterwards I met General Armstrong, and we compared recollections of this night. He wrote an account of it in the paper published at the institute, in 1892.
The next morning I rode to Burkeville Junction, to which point the South Side Railroad had been rebuilt from Petersburg, abandoned the old horse and took the train to Petersburg and City Point, and then by boat to Richmond. After a day or two there I applied for permission to go to my home in Baltimore, but in the meantime President Lincoln had been assassinated and times were harder for the poor Confederates. It was decided that I had voluntarily abandoned my home and could not return there. In this controversy I was denominated "The so-called Captain Colston," so that I had apparently neither habitation nor name.
It was not until more than one month afterwards that by the kind assistance of General E. O. C. Ord, the commander, and General N. M. Curtis (of Fort Fisher fame) I was permitted to go home, where I had even to get permission of the provost marshal to have my picture taken in my uniform.
Thus ended my service in the Confederate Army, the recollection of which is more gratifying to me than that of anything else that I have been able to do in my life.
