s that's why I can't stand red things now," he says;
"my pa hated the sight of it."

Thomas spent all of his enslaved years on the Campbell plantation, where
he describes pre-emancipation conditions as better than "he used to hear
they was on the other places." Campbell himself is described as
moderate, if not actually kindly. He did not permit his slaves to be
beaten to any great extent. "The most he would give us was a
'switching', and most of the time we could pray out of that."

"But sometimes he would get a hard man working for him, though," the old
man continues. "One of them used to 'buck and gag' us." This he
describes as a punishment used particularly with runaways, where the
slave would be gagged and tied in a squatting position and left in the
sun for hours. He claims to have seen other slaves suspended by their
thumbs for varying periods; he repeats, though, that these were not
Campbell's practices.

During the years before "surrinder", Thomas saw much traffic in slaves,
he says. Each year around New Years, itinerant "speculators" would come
to his vicinity and either hold a public sale, or lead the slaves, tied
together, to the plantation for inspection or sale.

"A whole lot of times they wouldn't sell 'em, they'd just trade 'em like
they did horses. The man (plantation owner) would have a couple of old
women who couldn't do much any more, and he'd swap 'em to the other man
for a young 'un. I seen lots of 'em traded that way, and sold for money
too."

Thomas recalls at least one Indian family that lived in his neighborhood
until he left it after the War. This family, he says, did not work, but
had a little place of their own. "They didn't have much to do with
nobody, though," he adds.

Others of his neighbors during these early years were abolition-minded
white residents of the area. These, he says would take in runaway slaves
and "either work 'em or hide 'em until they could try to get North."
When they'd get caught at it, though, they'd "take 'em to town and beat
'em like they would us, then take their places and run 'em out."

Later he came to know the "pu-trols" and the "refugees." Of the former,
he has only to say that they gave him a lot of trouble every time he
didn't have a pass to leave--"they only give me one twice a week,"--and
of the latter that it was they who induced the slaves of Campbell to
remain and finish their crop after the Emancipation, receiving
one-fourth of it for their sha