The Yankees went
in the smokehouse, broke it open, got all the meat they wanted. They
didn't pay you nothing in slavery time. But what meat the Yankees didn't
take for themselves, they give to the niggers.
"My folks never got anything for their work that I know of. I heard my
mother say that nobody got paid for their work. I don't know whether
they had a chance to make anything on the side or not.
"The Yankees, when they come in the yard that morning, told my father he
was free. I remember that myself. They come up riding horses and
carryin' long old guns with bayonets on them, and told him. They rode
all over the country from one place to another telling the niggers they
were free. Master didn't get a chance to tell us because he left when he
saw them comin'.
"When my mother and father were living on the plantation, they lived in
an old frame building. A portion of it was log. My father stayed with
the Calverts--his wife's white folks. At first old man Webb sold him to
them; then he bought him back and bought my mother too. They were
together when freedom came. You know they auctioned you off in slavery
time. Every year, they would, they put you up on the auction block and
buy and sell. That was down in Georgia. We was in Georgia when we was
freed--in Atlanta.
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