“Oh Lordy!  The way us Niggers was treated was awful.  Marster would beat, knock, kick, kill.  He done ever’thing he could ’cept eat us.  We was worked to death.  We worked all Sunday, all day, all night.  He whipped us ‘til some jus’ lay down to die.  It was a poor life.  I knows it aint right to have hate in the heart, but, God Almighty!  It’s hard to be forgivin’ when I think of old man Rankin.

“If one o’ his Niggers done something to displease him, which was mos’ ever’ day, he’d whip him’ til he’d mos’ die an’ then he’d kick him ’roun in the dust.  He’d even take his gun an’, before the Nigger had time to open his mouth, he’d jus’ stan’ there an’ shoot him down.

“We’d git up at dawn to go to the fiel’s.  We’d take our pails o’ grub with us an’ hang’ em up in a row by the fence.  We had meal an’ pork an’ beef an’ greens to eat.  That was mos’ly what we had.  Many a time when noontime come an’ we’d go to eat our vittals the marster would come a-walkin’ through the fiel with ten or twelve o’ his houn’ dogs.  If he looked in the pails an’ was displeased with what he seen in ’em, he took ‘em an’ dumped ’em out before our very eyes an’ let the dogs grab it up.  We didn’ git nothin’ to eat then ’til we come home late in the evenin’.  After he left we’d pick up pieces of the grub that the dogs left an’ eat ’em.  Hongry—­hongry—­we was so hongry.

“We had our separate cabins an’ at sunset all of us would go in an’ shut the door an’ pray the Lord Marster Jim didn’ call us out.

“We never had much clothes ‘ceptin’ what was give us by the marster or the mistis.  Winter time we never had ’nough to wear nor ’nough to eat.  We wore homespun all the time.  The marster didn’ think we needed anything, but jus’ a little.

“We didn’ go to church, but Sundays we’d gather ‘roun’ an’ listen to the mistis read a little out o’ the Bible.  The marster said we didn’ need no religion an’ he finally stopped her from readin’ to us.

“When the war come Marster was a captain of a regiment.  He went away an’ stayed a year.  When he come back he was even meaner than before.

“When he come home from the war he stayed for two weeks.  The night ‘fore he was a-fixin’ to leave to go back he come out on his front porch to smoke his pipe.  He was a-standin’ leanin’ up ag’in’ a railin’ when somebody sneaked up in the darkness an’ shot him three times.  Oh my Lord!  He died the nex’ mornin’.  He never knowed who done it.  I was glad they shot him down.

“Sometimes the cavalry would come an’ stay at the house an’ the mistis would have to ’tend to ’em an’ see that they got plenty to eat an’ fresh horses.

“I never seen no fightin’.  I stayed on the plantation ’til the war was over.  I didn’ see none o’ the fightin’.

“I don’t ‘member nothin’ ’bout Jefferson Davis.  Lincoln was the man that set us free.  He was a big general in the war.

“I ’member a song we sung, then.  It went kinda like this: