of getting slaves up, but I do
know we didn't get up before day on our place. Their rule was to work
slaves from sunup to sundown. Before they had supper they had a little
piddlin' around to do, but the time was their own to do as they pleased
after they had supper. Heaps of times they got passes and went off to
neighboring plantations to visit and dance, but sometimes they went to
hold prayer-meetings. There were certain plantations where we were not
permitted to go and certain folks were never allowed on our place. Old
Boss was particular about how folks behaved on his place; all his slaves
had to come up to a certain notch and if they didn't do that he punished
them in some way or other. There was no whipping done, for Old Boss
never did believe in whipping slaves.

"None of the slaves from our place was ever put in that county jail at
Jefferson. That was the only jail we ever heard of in those days. Old
Boss attended to all the correction necessary to keep order among his
own slaves. Once a slave trader came by the place and offered to buy Ma.
Old Boss took her to Jefferson to sell her on the block to that man. It
seemed like sales of slaves were not legal unless they took place on the
trading block in certain places, usually in the county site. The trader
wouldn't pay what Old Boss asked for her, and Old Miss and the young
bosses all objected strong to his selling her, so he brought Ma back
home. She was a fine healthy woman and would have made a nice looking
house girl.

"The biggest part of the teaching done among the slaves was by our young
bosses but, as far as schools for slaves was concerned, there were no
such things until after the end of the war, and then we were no longer
slaves. There were just a few separate churches for slaves; none in our
part of the country. Slaves went to the same church as their white folks
and sat in the back of the house or in a gallery. My Pa could read the
Bible in his own way, even in that time of slavery; no other slave on
our place could do that.

"Not one slave or white person either died on our plantation during the
part of slavery that I can bring to memory. I was too busy playing to
take in any of the singing at funerals and at church, and I never went
to a baptizing until I was a great big chap, long after slavery days
were over.

"Slaves ran off to the woods all right, but I never heard of them
running off to no North. Paterollers never came on Old Boss' place
un