em ailments.

I 'member the battle being fit. The white folks buried all the jewelry
and silver and all the gold in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Orange,
Texas. Master made all us niggers come together and git ready to leave
'cause the Yankees was coming. We took a steamer. Now this was in
slavery time, sho' 'nuff slavery. Then we got on a steamship and
pulled out to Galveston. Then he told the captain to feed we niggers.
We was on the bay, not the ocean. We left Galveston and went on trains
for Houston.

One, my sister Liza, was mulatto and Master Colonel Sims' son had 3
chillun by her. We never seen her no more after her last child was
born. I found out though that she was in Canada.

After the War, Master Colonel Sims went to git the mail and so he call
Daniel Ivory, the overseer, and say to him, "Go round to all the
quarters and tell all the niggers to come up, I got a paper to read to
'em. They're free now, so you kin git you another job, 'cause I ain't
got no more niggers which is my own." Niggers come up from the cabins
nappy-headed, jest lak they gwine to the field. Master Colonel Sims
say, "Caroline (that's my mammy), you is free as me. Pa said bring you
back and I'se gwina do jest that. So you go on and work and I'll pay
you and your three oldest chillun $10.00 a month a head and $4.00 fer
Harriet," that's me, and then he turned to the rest and say "Now all
you'uns will receive $10.00 a head till the crops is laid by." Don't
you know before he got half way thoo', over half them niggers was
gone.

Them Klu Klux Klans come and ask for water with the false stomachs and
make lak they was drinking three bucketsful. They done some terrible
things, but God seen it all and marked it down.

We didn't had no law, we had "bureau." Why, in them days iffen
somebody stole anything from you, they had to pay you and not the
Law. Now they done turned that round and you don't git nothing.

One day whiles master was gone hunting, Mistress Julia told her
brother to give Miss Harriett (me) a free whipping. She was a nigger
killer. Master Colonel Sam come home and he said, "You infernal sons
o' bitches don't you know there is 300 Yankees camped out here and
iffen they knowed you'd whipped this nigger the way you done done,
they'd kill all us. Iffen they find it out, I'll kill all you all."
Old rich devils, I'm here, but they is gone.

God choosed Abraham Lincoln to free us. It took one of them to free us
so's they couldn't