r hired no overseer
over them. When he whipped them he took their shirts off and whipped
them on their naked backs. He cut the blood out of some of them. He
never did rub no salt nor vinegar in their wounds. His youngest son done
his overseeing. He would whip them sometime but he wasn't tight on them
like some that I knowed.

"A fellow by the name of Jim Holbert was mean to his slaves as a man
could be. He would whip them night and day. Work them till dark; then
they would eat supper. Cook their own supper. Had nothing to cook but a
little meat and bread and molasses. Then they would go back and bale up
three or four bales of cotton. Some nights they work till twelve o'clock
then get up before daylight--'round four o'clock--and cook their
breakfast and go to work again. That was on Jim Holbert and Lard Moore's
place. Them was two different men and two different places--plantations.
They whipped their slaves a good deal--always beating down on somebody.
They made their backs sore. Their backs would be bleeding just like they
cut it with knives. Then they would wash it down with water and salt.

"On my master's farm, each one cooked in his own cabin. While the hands
were working, my master left one child, the largest, stay there and
taken care of the little ones.

"They had bloodhounds too; they'd run you away in the woods. Send for a
man that had hounds to track you if you run away. They'd run you and bay
you, and a white man would ride up there and say, 'If you hit one of
them hounds, I'll blow your brains out.' He'd say 'your damn brains.'
Them hounds would worry you and bite you and have you bloody as a beef,
but you dassent to hit one of them. They would tell you to stand still
and put your hands over your privates. I don't guess they'd have killed
you but you believed they would. They wouldn't try to keep the hounds
off of you; they would set them on you to see them bite you. Five or six
or seven hounds bitin' you on every side and a man settin' on a horse
holding a doubled shotgun on you.

"My old miss's sister hired slave women out to old Jim Holbert once. One
of them was in a delicate state, and they dug a hole and put her stomach
down in it and whipped her till she could hardly walk.

"Holbert lived to see the niggers freed. All of his slaves left him
pretty well when freedom come. He managed to hold on to his money. He
didn't go to the War. He was pretty old. He had two sons in the War--his
wife had one in