Running titles on each page of the text have not been preserved. Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed. All quotation marks, ampersand and dollar signs have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as " and " respectively. All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ' and ' respectively. Indentation in lines has not been preserved. Slaves -- United States -- Biography.
Slavery -- United States. Slaves' writings, American. Neither master nor mistress nor neighbors had time to bestow a thought upon us, for the great Civil War was raging. That great event in American history was a matter wholly outside the realm of our childish interests. Of course we heard our elders discuss the various events of the great struggle, but it meant nothing to us. On the plantation there were ten white children and fourteen colored children. Our days were spent roaming about from plantation to plantation, not knowing or caring what things were going on in the great world outside our little realm.
Planting time and harvest time were happy days for us. How often at the harvest time the planters discovered cornstalks missing from the ends of the rows, and blamed the crows! We were called the "little fairy Page 4 devils. Those slaves that were not married served the food from the great house, and about half-past eleven they would send the older children with food to the workers in the fields.
Of course, I followed, and before we got to the fields, we had eaten the food nearly all up. When the workers returned home they complained, and we were whipped. The slaves got their allowance every Monday night of molasses, meat, corn meal, and a kind of flour called "dredgings" or "shorts. Then would come the whipping-post. Master himself never whipped his slaves; this was left to the overseer. We children had no supper, and only a little piece of bread or something of the kind in the morning.
