From a plantation adjoining ours, thirty negroes were carried away at the same time.  Of these, a half-dozen escaped and returned.  The balance, joined to the party from our own plantation, formed a mournful procession.  I heard of them at many points, from residents of the vicinity.  These persons would not admit that the guerrillas were treating the negroes cruelly.  Those who escaped had a frightful story to tell.  They had been beaten most barbarously with whips, sticks, and frequently with the butts of pistols; two or three were left senseless by the roadside, and one old man had been shot, because he was too much exhausted to go further.  I learned, a few days later, that the captured negroes were taken to Winnsboro; a small town in the interior, and there sold to a party of Texas traders.

From our plantation the guerrillas stole twenty-four mules at the time of their visit, and an equal number from our neighbors.  These were sold to the same party of traders that purchased the negroes, and there was evidently as little compunction at speculating in the one “property” as in the other.

Our overseer, Mr. Owen, had been bound upon his horse and taken away.  This I learned from the negroes remaining on the plantation.  I made diligent inquiries of parties who arrived from the direction taken by the guerrillas, to ascertain, if possible, where he had been carried.  One person assured me, positively, that he saw Mr. Owen, a prisoner, twenty miles away.  Mrs.

Owen and five children were living at Waterproof, and, of course, were much alarmed on hearing of his capture.

It was on Thursday, two days after the raid, that I visited the plantation.  Our lower plantation had not been disturbed, but many of the negroes were gone, and all work was suspended.  It was of no use to attempt to prosecute the planting enterprise, and we immediately prepared to abandon the locality.  The remaining negroes were set at work to shell the corn already gathered.  As fast as shelled, it was taken to Waterproof for shipment to market.  The plows were left rusting in the furrows, where they were standing at the moment the guerrillas appeared.  The heaps of cotton-seed and the implements used by the planting-gang remained in statu quo.  The cotton we planted was growing finely.  To leave four hundred acres thus growing, and giving promise of a fine harvest, was to throw away much labor, but there was no alternative.

On Saturday, four days after the raid, the corporal of a scouting party came to our plantation and said the body of a white man had been found in the woods a short distance away.  I rode with him to the spot he designated.  The mystery concerning the fate of our overseer was cleared up.  The man was murdered within a thousand yards of the house.

From the main road leading past our plantation, a path diverged into the forest.  This path was taken by some of the guerrillas in their retreat.  Following it two hundred yards, and then turning a short distance to the left, I found a small cypress-tree, not more than thirty feet high.  One limb of this tree drooped as it left the trunk, and then turned upward.  The lowest part of the bend of this limb was not much higher than a tall man’s head.