It was just such a tree, and just such a limb, as a party bent on murder would select for hanging their victim.  I thought, and still think, that the guerrillas turned aside with the design of using the rope as the instrument of death.  Under this tree lay the remains of our overseer.  The body was fast decomposing.  A flock of buzzards was gathered around, and was driven away with difficulty.  They had already begun their work, so that recognition under different circumstances would not have been easy.  The skull was detached from the body, and lay with the face uppermost.  A portion of the scalp adhered to it, on which a gray lock was visible.  A bit of gray beard was clinging to the chin.

In the centre of the forehead there was a perforation, evidently made by a pistol-bullet.  Death must have been instantaneous, the pistol doing the work which the murderers doubtless intended to accomplish by other means.  The body had been stripped of all clothing, save a single under-garment.  Within a dozen yards lay a pair of old shoes, and close by their side a tattered and misshapen hat.  The shoes and hat were not those which our overseer had worn, but were evidently discarded by the guerrillas when they appropriated the apparel of their victim.  I caused a grave to be dug, and the remains placed in a rude coffin and buried.  If a head-stone had been obtainable, I would have given the locality a permanent designation.  The particulars of the murder we were never able to ascertain.

Three days later we abandoned the plantation.  We paid the negroes for the work they had done, and discharged them from further service.  Those that lived on the plantation previous to our going there, generally remained, as the guerrillas had assured them they would be unmolested if they cultivated no cotton.  A few of them went to Natchez, to live near their “missus.”  Those whom we had hired from other localities scattered in various directions.  Some went to the Contraband Home at Davis’s Bend, others to the negro quarters at Natchez, others to plantations near Vidalia, and a few returned to their former homes.  Our “family” of a hundred and sixty persons was thus broken up.

We removed the widow and children of our overseer to Natchez, and purchased for them the stock and goodwill of a boarding-house keeper.  We sent a note to the leader of the guerrilla band that manifested such a desire to “go through” us, and informed him that we could be found in St. Louis or New York.  Before the end of May we passed Vicksburg on our Journey Due North.

Most of the plantations in the vicinity of Natchez, Vicksburg, and Milliken’s Bend were given up.  Probably a dozen lessees were killed, and the same number carried to Texas.  Near Vicksburg, the chivalric guerrillas captured two lessees, and tortured them most barbarously before putting them to death.  They cut off the ears of one man, and broke his nose by a blow from a club.  Thus mutilated, he was