“Ol’ man came out on April 9, 1865. and said, ’General Lee’s whipped now and dam badly whipped.  The war is over.  The Yankees done got the country.  It is all over.  Just go home and hide everything you got.  General Lee’s army is coming this way and stealing everything they can get their hands on.’  But General Lee’s army went the other way.

“I saw a sack of money setting near the store.  I looked around and I didn’t see nobody.  So I took it and carried it home.  Then I hid it.  I heard in town that Jeff Davis was dead and his money was no good.  I took out some of the money and went to the grocery and bought some bread and handed her five dollar bill.  She said, ’My goodness, Henry, that money is no good; the Yankees have killed it.’  And I had done gone all over the woods and hid that money out.  There wasn’t no money.  Nobody had anything.  I worked for two bits a day.  All our money was dead.

“The Yankees fed the white people with hard tacks (at Liberty, Virginia).  All around the country, them that didn’t have nothin’ had to go to the commissary and get hard tacks.

“I started home.  I went to town and rambled all around but there wasn’t nothin’ for me.

“I was set free in April.  About nine o’clock in the morning when we went to see what work we would do, ol’ man Wright called us all up and told us to come together.  Then he told us we were free.  I couldn’t get nothing to do; so I jus’ stayed on and made a crop.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  John W. H. Barnett, Marianna, Arkansas
Age:  81

“I was born at Clinton Parish, Louisiana.  I’m eighty-one years old.  My parents and four children was sold and left six children behind.  They kept the oldest children.  In that way I was sold but never alone.  Our family was divided and that brought grief to my parents.  We was sold on a block at New Orleans.  J.J.  Gambol (Gamble?) in north Louisiana bought us.  After freedom I seen all but one of our family.  I don’t recollect why that was.

“For three weeks steady after the surrender people was passing from the War and for two years off and on somebody come along going home.  Some rode and some had a cane or stick walking.  Mother was cooking a pot of shoulder meat.  Them blue soldiers come by and et it up.  I didn’t get any I know that.  They cleaned us out.  Father was born at Eastern Shore, Maryland.  He was about half Indian.  Mother’s mother was a squaw.  I’m more Indian than Negro.  Father said it was a white man’s war.  He didn’t go to war.  Mother was very dark.  He spoke a broken tongue.

“We worked on after freedom for the man we was owned by.  We worked crops and patches.  I didn’t see much difference then.  I see a big change come out of it.  We had to work.  The work didn’t slacken a bit.  I never owned land but my father owned eighty acres in Drew County.  I don’t know what become of it.  I worked on the railroad section, laid crossties, worked in stave mills.  I farmed a whole lot all along.  I hauled and cut wood.