armth. They would kill hogs and slip the
meat to some slave to cook for food. When their owners looked for them,
"Bob Amos" who raised "nigger hounds" (hounds raised solely to track
Negro slaves) was summoned and the dogs located them and surrounded them
in their hide-out; one went one way and one the other and escaped in the
swamps; they would run until they came to a fence--each kept some
"graveyard dust and a few lightwood splinters" with which they smoked
their feet and jumped the fence and the dogs turned back and could track
no further. Thus, they stayed in the woods until freedom, when they came
out and worked for pay. Now, you know "Uncle Dick" just died a few years
ago in Sparta, Georgia."

When the Civil War came he remembers hearing one night "Sherman is
coming." It was said that Wheeler's Cavalry of the Confederates was
always "running and fighting." Lane had moved the family to Macon,
Georgia, and they lived on a place called "Dunlap's Hill." That night
four preachers were preaching "Fellow soldiers, the enemy is just here
to Bolden's Brook, sixteen miles away and you may be carried into
judgment; prepare to meet your God." While they were preaching, bombs
began to fly because Wheeler's Cavalry was only six miles away instead
of 16 miles; women screamed and children ran. Wheeler kept wagons ahead
of him so that when one was crippled the other would replace it. He says
he imagines he hears the voice of Sherman now, saying: "Tell Wheeler to
go on to South Carolina; we will mow it down with grape shot and plow it
in with bombshell."

Emancipation came and with it great rejoicing. He recalls that
Republicans were called "Radicals" just after the close of the Civil
War.

Mr. Lane was able to save all of his meat, silver, and other valuables
during the war by having a cave dug in the hog pasture; the hogs
trampled over it daily.

"Parson" states that among the papers in his trunk he has a piece of
money called "shin plasters" which was used during the Civil War.

The slaves were not allowed to attend schools of any kind; and school
facilities immediately following Emancipation were very poor; when the
first teacher, Miss Smith, a Yankee, came to Sparta, Georgia and began
teaching Sunday School, all of the children were given testaments or
catechisms which their parents were afraid for them to keep lest their
masters whip them, but the teacher called on the parents and explained
to them that they were as fre