As one of those rowboats was pushed out to take the dead and wounded from the fort, and as the for men were put into the boat, which was generally done before they put in the latter, fortunately, just before the wounded were put in, a Parrott shell was fired into it from Fort Wagner by the Union forces, which sunk both the boat and the coffins, with their remains.

My readers would ask how the Confederates disposed of the negroes who were killed in Fort Sumter.  Those who were not too badly mutilated were sent over to the city of Charleston and were buried in a place which was set apart to bury the negroes.  But others, who were so badly cut up by shells, were put into boxes, with pieces of iron in them, and carried out a little away from Sumter and thrown overboard.

I was then taken to John’s Island wharf, and from there to the city of Charleston in a steamer, and carried to Doctor Rag’s hospital, where I stopped until September.  Then I was sent back home to my master’s plantation.  Quoting the exact words of Major John Johnson, a Confederate officer under whom I was a part of the time at the above-named place, I would say:  “July 7th, Fort Sumter’s third great bombardment, lasting sixty days and nights, with a total of 14,666 rounds fired at the fort, with eighty-one casualties.”

WHAT TOOK PLACE AFTER.

I said that after I got well enough to travel I was sent back home to my master’s plantation, about a hundred miles from the city of Charleston, in central South Carolina.  This was in September of 1864, and I, with the rest of my fellow-negroes on this extensive plantation, and with other slaves all over the South, were held in suspense waiting the final outcome of the emancipation proclamation, issued January, 1863, but as the war continued, it had not taken effect until the spring of 1865.

Here I had less work than before the war, for the nearer the war approached its close the less the slaves had to do, as the masters were at the end of their wits what to do.  In the latter part of 1864 Gen. Sherman, with his army of a hundred thousand men and almost as many stragglers, covered the space of about sixty miles in width while marching from Georgia through South Carolina.  The army camped around Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, for a short time.  Early in the spring of 1865 the commissary building first took fire, which soon spread to such extent that the whole city of Columbia was consumed; just a few houses on the suburbs were left.

The commissary building was set on fire by one of the two parties, but it was never fully settled whether it was done by Gen. Sherman’s men or by the Confederates, who might have, as surmised by some, as they had to evacuate the city, set it on fire to keep Gen. Sherman’s men from getting the food.  After this Columbia was occupied by a portion of Sherman’s men, while the others marched on toward North Carolina.