SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

"They had a battle at Lawrence ♦ It was ^7 miles# The soldiers
passed long the Big road* I didn f t see the battles# I heard plenty
talk about that conflict at Lawrence though*
"I heard the slaves was go in 1 to get 40 acres and a mule# I tell
you they didn f t wait to see if they was going to get another meal*
They went wild, walking and hooping up and down the road* They found
out when they nearly starved they had got the bad end of the game some-
how* Then to keep em from starvin 1 they had certain days to go to
Lawrence and get a little rations* Not much I tell you* They started
steal in* and the Ku Klux started up bout that*
"The President got killed (Abraham Lincoln)* Then they knowed the
gig was up* They had to go to work hard as ever and mighty little to
eat* The slaves did vote* It was the color of the paper they used way
they knowed how to vote* The Republican government had full sway 12
years* All the offices at Edgef ield nearly was Negroes cept the sheriff*
The Yankees tell em what to do way they knowed how* Butler went to Con-
gress* He was a Negro —» (???)* That was what the Ku KLux was iaad bout*
They run the Yankees out and took holt of the offices soon as they
could*
"Our master had no Ku Klux comin* on our place*) He protected
us* It wasn't no different than slavery till I was nearly grown and
a drove was walking going west to better place* I got in with them and
come on* The Ku Klux had killed several Negroes* That scared them all
up» I remember Tuscaloosa* Alabama when we ccme through there* We
was walking — a line a mile long — marching and singing* They was
building back in a hurry seemed like to me* The town had been burned up#
4*