to the white church and all set down and
put our shoes on and go up close and listen to the service.

Old Master was baptized almost every Sunday and cussed us all out on
Monday. I didn't join the church until after freedom, and I always was
a scoundrel for dancing. My favorite preacher was old Pete Conway. He
was the only ordained colored preacher we had after freedom, and he
married me.

Old Master wouldn't let us take herb medicine, and he got all our
medicine in Van Buren when we was sick. But I wore a buckeye on my
neck just the same.

When the War come along I was a grown man, and I went off to serve
because old Master was too old to go, but he had to send somebody
anyways. I served as George Stover, but every time the sergeant would
call out "Abe Stover", I would answer "Here".

They had me driving a mule team wagon that Old Master furnished, and I
went with the Sesesh soldiers from Van Buren to Texarkana and back a
dozen times or more. I was in the War two years, right up to the day
of freedom. We had a battle close to Texarkana and another big one
near Van Buren, but I never left Arkansas and never got a scratch.

One time in the Texarkana battle I was behind some pine trees and the
bullets cut the limbs down all over me. I dug a big hole with my bare
hands before I hardly knowed how I done it.

One time two white soldiers named Levy and Briggs come to the wagon
train and said they was hunting slaves for some purpose. Some of us
black boys got scared because we heard they was going to Squire Mack
and get a reward for catching runaways, so me and two more lit out of
there.

They took out after us and we got to a big mound in the woods and hid.
Somebody shot at me and I rolled into some bushes. He rid up and got
down to look for me but I was on t'other side of his horse and he
never did see me. When they was gone we went back to the wagons just
as the regiment was pulling out and the officer didn't say nothing.

They was eleven negro boys served in my regiment for their masters.
The first year was mighty hard because we couldn't get enough to eat.
Some ate poke greens without no grease and took down and died.

How I knowed I was free, we was bad licked, I reckon. Anyways, we quit
fighting and a Federal soldier come up to my wagon and say: "Whose
mules?" "Abe Stover's mules," I says, and he tells me then, "Let me
tell you, black boy, you are as free now as old Abe Stover his own
self!" When he said that