d to see the
doctor use his knife and saw, cutting off a leg, or arm, and sometimes
both, with as much indifference as if he were simply cutting up beef,
and to hear the doctor say, of almost every other one of these victims,
after a leg or an arm was amputated, "Put that fellow in his box,"
meaning his coffin, was an awful experience. After the surgeon had asked
to whom I belonged, he dressed my wounds.

My readers will remember that I stated that no big boat could run to
Fort Sumter at that time, on account of the bombardment. We had to be
conveyed back to John's Island wharf in rowboats, which was the nearest
distance a steamer could go to Fort Sumter.

As one of those rowboats was pushed out to take the dead and wounded
from the fort, and as the for men were put into the boat, which was
generally done before they put in the latter, fortunately, just before
the wounded were put in, a Parrott shell was fired into it from Fort
Wagner by the Union forces, which sunk both the boat and the coffins,
with their remains.

My readers would ask how the Confederates disposed of the negroes who
were killed in Fort Sumter. Those who were not too badly mutilated were
sent over to the city of Charleston and were buried in a place which was
set apart to bury the negroes. But others, who were so badly cut up by
shells, were put into boxes, with pieces of iron in them, and carried
out a little away from Sumter and thrown overboard.

I was then taken to John's Island wharf, and from there to the city of
Charleston in a steamer, and carried to Doctor Rag's hospital, where I
stopped until September. Then I was sent back home to my master's
plantation. Quoting the exact words of Major John Johnson, a Confederate
officer under whom I was a part of the time at the above-named place, I
would say: "July 7th, Fort Sumter's third great bombardment, lasting
sixty days and nights, with a total of 14,666 rounds fired at the fort,
with eighty-one casualties."

WHAT TOOK PLACE AFTER.

I said that after I got well enough to travel I was sent back home to my
master's plantation, about a hundred miles from the city of Charleston,
in central South Carolina. This was in September of 1864, and I, with
the rest of my fellow-negroes on this extensive plantation, and with
other slaves all over the South, were held in suspense waiting the
final outcome of the emancipation proclamation, issued January, 1863,
but as the war continued, it had not taken