Two incidents which she considers caused respect for slaves by their masters and finally the Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln she tells in this order.

The first event tells of a young, strong healthy Negro woman who knew her work and did it well.  “She would grab up two bags of guana (fertilizer) and tote ’em at one time,” said Irene, and was never found shirking her work.  The overseer on the plantation, was very hard on the slaves and practiced striking them across the back with a whip when he wanted to spur them on to do more work.

Irene says, one day a crowd of women were hoeing in the field and the overseer rode along and struck one of the women across the back with the whip, and the one nearest her spoke and said that if he ever struck her like that, it would be the day he or she would die.  The overseer heard the remark and the first opportunity he got, he rode by the woman and struck her with the whip and started to ride on.  The woman was hoeing at the time, she whirled around, struck the overseer on his head with the hoe, knocking him from his horse, she then pounced upon him and chopped his head off.  She went mad for a few seconds and proceeded to chop and mutilate his body; that done to her satisfaction, she then killed his horse.  She then calmly went to tell the master of the murder, saying “I’ve done killed de overseer,” the master replied—­“Do you mean to say you’ve killed the overseer?” she answered yes, and that she had killed the horse also.  Without hesitating, the master pointing to one of his small cabins on the plantation said—­“You see that house over there?” she answered yes—­at the same time looking—­“Well” said he, “take all your belongings and move into that house and you are free from this day and if the mistress wants you to do anything for her, do it if you want to.”  Irene related with much warmth the effect that incident had upon the future treatment of the slaves.

The other incident occured in Virginia.  It was upon an occasion when Mrs. Abraham Lincoln was visiting in Richmond.  A woman slaveowner had one of her slaves whipped in the presence of Mrs. Lincoln.  It was easily noticed that the woman was an expectant mother.  Mrs. Lincoln was horrified at the situation and expressed herself as being so, saying that she was going to tell the President as soon as she returned to the White House.  Whether this incident had any bearing upon Mr. Lincoln’s actions or not, those slaves who were present and Irene says that they all believed it to be the beginning of the President’s activities to end slavery.

Besides these incidents, Irene remembers that women who were not strong and robust were given such work as sewing, weaving and minding babies.  The cloth from which the Sunday clothes of the slaves was made was called ausenburg and the slave women were very proud of this.  The older women were required to do most of the weaving of cloth and making shirts for the male slaves.