The Richmond News-Leader gives an account of an enslaved African American and Indian man named ‘Scrub’ who claimed to have the gift of second sight, and who may have prophesied the Civil War battle of Drewry’s Bluff for George Washington. According to the legend, while leading Washington from Colonel Ball’s tavern to his lodging at Ampthill, Scrub took a large crystal out of his pocket and ‘saw a big army… down where the river bends… [a boat puffing smoke like a chimney]… and soldiers coming from beneath the trees by the thousands.’ No date for this account is given, but the story first appears in print in the 1920s, a time by which Americans were eager to romanticize accounts of our own past, particularly anything connecting George Washington and the Civil War.
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