ding that his slaves, in view
of the coming difficulties, did not increase fast enough for profit,
called them all together on the 1st of January, 1862, and said to
them: "Now, wenches, mind, every one of you that aint 'big' in three
or four months, I intend to sell to the slave-trader." He afterward
chuckled over it, adding that it "brought them to terms." Comment
needless.

In the fall of 1861, in Piketon, Ky., at the headwaters of the Big
Sandy, were two families--one known as the Slone family, the other as
the Johnson family. The slaves of the former were all liberated about
seventeen years before, by a will, stipulating that they should remain
with his wife and work the plantation while she lived. Mrs. Slone died
about two years after her husband, and not only emancipated these
slaves, according to the last will and testament of her deceased
husband, but, as they had taken more care of the old lady in her
declining years than her sons, she thought it but equitable and right
to disinherit the sons and leave the remnant of a once large estate,
reduced to $9,000, to the slaves. But the gloating avarice of her
gambling sons, backed by a vile public sentiment, prompted these
unnatural sons to attempt to break the wills of their father and
mother. After litigating the case about twelve years, and having been
defeated in the highest courts in Kentucky, they went back and set up
a claim of $2,000 against their father's estate, when these despoiled
slaves had to deposit the last of their estate as security, having
been for more than twelve years thus harassed and perplexed by
vexatious lawsuits. When the Union army under General Nelson came into
that country, and had that trumpeted battle at Ivy Mountain, and our
troops reached Prestonburg, twenty-five miles from Piketon, these
hunted and plundered ones concluded that _now_ was the time for them
to escape to the "promised land." They gathered together their little
_all_, cut fifty or sixty saw-logs, made a raft, loaded their worldly
goods on it, and floated down the river. When they reached
Prestonburg, General Nelson had them arrested, cut their raft to
pieces, and sent them back to Piketon. Afterward, when our troops,
under the intrepid Garfield, moved up the river, and made their
head-quarters at Piketon, these tormented and persecuted ones were
told that now they might avail themselves of the Government boats to
go down the river and leave the land of their tormentors.