Do you want to hear how I runned away and jined the Yankees? You know
Abraham Lincoln 'claired freedom in '63, first day of January. In
October '63, I runned away and went to Pine Bluff to get to the Yankees.
I was on the Blackwell plantation south of Pine Bluff in '63. They was
building a new house; I wanted to feel some putty in my hand. One early
morning I clim a ladder to get a little chunk and the overseer man, he
seed me. Here he come, yelling me to get down; he gwine whip me 'cause
I'se a thief, he say. He call a slave boy and tell him cut ten willer
whips; he gwine wear every one out on me. When he's gone to eat
breakfas', I runs to my cabin and tells my sister, "I'se leaving this
here place for good." She cry and say, "Overseer man, he kill you." I
says, "He kill me anyhow." The young boy what cut the whips--he named
Jerry--he come along wif me, and we wade the stream for long piece.
Heerd the hounds a-howling, getting ready for to chase after us. Then we
hide in dark woods. It was cold, frosty weather. Two days and two nights
we traveled. That boy, he so cold and hungry, he want to fall out by the
way, but I drug him on. When we gets to the Yankee camp all our troubles
was over. We gets all the contraband we could eat. Was they more
run-aways there? Oh, Lordy, yessum. Hundreds, I reckon. Yessum, the
Yankees feeds all them refugees on contraband.
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