hout exception, on these trips, the corn would so shift as to become
unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it.
As I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would
have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a chance passer-by came
along who would help me out of my trouble. The hours while waiting for
some one were usually spent in crying. The time consumed in this way
made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground
and reached home it would be far into the night. The road was a lonely
one, and often led through dense forests. I was always frightened. The
woods were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army,
and I had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy
when he found him alone was to cut off his ears. Besides, when I was
late in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a
flogging.

I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys
and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being discussed,
was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my mother
kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln and his
armies might be successful, and that one day she and her children might
be free. In this connection I have never been able to understand how the
slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so
far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves
so accurately and completely informed about the great National questions
that were agitating the country. From the time that Garrison, Lovejoy,
and others began to agitate for freedom, the slaves throughout the South
kept in close touch with the progress of the movement. Though I was a
mere child during the preparation for the Civil War and during the war
itself, I now recall the many late-at-night whispered discussions that I
heard my mother and the other slaves on the plantation indulge in. These
discussions showed that they understood the situat