“Talking about hard times, war times is all the hard times I ever seen.  No foolin’!  It was really hard times.  We had no bread, shoot down a cow and cut out what we wanted, take it on.  We et it raw.  Sometimes we would cook it but we et more raw than cooked.  When we got to Ft.  Smith we struck good times.  Folks was living on parched corn and sorghum molasses.  They had no mills to grind up the corn.  Times was hard they thought.  Further south we come better times got.  When we landed at Arkadelphia we stayed all night and I was sold next day.  Mr. Spence was the hotel keeper.  He bought me.  He give one hundred fifty dollars and a fine saddle horse for me.  I never heard the trade but that is what I heard ’em say afterwards.  Mr. Spence was a cripple man.  John Merrican left me.  He been mean to me.  He was rough.  Hit me over the head, beat me.  He was mean.  He lived down ’bout Warren, down somewhere in the southern part of the state.  I never seen him no more.  Mr. Spence was good to me since I come to think about it but then I didn’t think so.  We had plenty plain victuals at the hotel.  He meant to be good to me but I expected too much I reckon.  Then it being a public place I heard lots what was said around.  I come to think I ought to be treated good as the boarders.  Now I see it different.  Mr. Spence walked on a stick and a crutch.  He couldn’t be very cruel to me if he had wanted to.  He wasn’t mean a bit.  I was the bellboy and swept ’round some and gardened.

“In 1866, in May, I run off.  I went to Dallas County across Ouachita River.  I stayed there with Matlocks and Russells and Welches till I was good and grown.  Mr. Spence never tried to find me.  I hoped he would.  They wasn’t so bad but I had to work harder.  They never give me nothing.  I seen Mr. Spence twice after I left but he never seen me.  If he did he never let on.  I never seen his wife no more after I left her.  I didn’t see him for four years after I left, then in three more years I seen him but the hotel had burned.

Freedom

“Mr. Spence told me I was free.  I didn’t leave.  I didn’t have sense to know where to go.  I didn’t know what freedom was.  So he went to the free mens’ bureau and had me bound to him till I was twenty-one years old.  He told me what he had done.  He was to clothe me, feed me, send me to school so many months a year, give me a horse and bridle and saddle and one hundred fifty dollars when I was twenty-one years old.  That would have been eight or nine years.  Seemed too long a time to wait.  I thought I could do better than that.  I never done half that good.  I never went to school a day in my life.  I was sorry I run off after it was too late.

“I heard too much talking at the hotel.  They argued a whole heap more than they do now.  They set around and talk about slavery and freedom and everything else.  It made me restless and I run off.  I was ashamed to be seen much less go back.  Folks used to have shame.