We had to have a pass to go around
on, or the patterollers would work on us. I saw a lot of patterollers.
Marster gave his Negroes a pass for twelve months. He sent his timber
to Wilmington, and worked timber at other places so he gave his slaves
yearly passes. Then when the war was about up me and him went to the
post office, and he got the paper. All the niggers were free. We
stopped on the way home at a large sassafras tree by the side o' the
road where he always stopped to read, and he read, and told me I was
free.

"I did not know what it was or what it meant. We came on to the house
where my mother was and I said, 'Sissie, we is free.' She said, 'Hush,
or I will put the hickory on you.' I then went to grandma, the one I
called mammy and threw my arms around her neck and said, 'Mammy we are
free, what does it mean?' and mammy, who was grandma, said, 'You hush
sich talk, or I will knock you down wid a loom stick.'

"Marster was comin' then, and he had the paper in his hand and was
cryin'. He came to the door and called grandma and said, 'You are free,
free as I am, but I want you to stay on. If you go off you will perish.
If you stay on now the crop is planted and work it, we will divide.'
Marster was cryin' and said, 'I do not own you any longer.' He told her
to get the horn and blow it. It was a ram's horn. She blew twice for
the hands to come to the house.

"They were workin' in the river lowground about a mile or more away.
She blew a long blow, then another. Marster told her to keep blowin!
After awhile all the slaves come home; she had called them all in.
Marster met them at the gate, and told them to put all the mules up,
all the hoes and plows, that they were all free. He invited all to eat
dinner. He had five women cooking. He told them all he did not want
them to leave, but if they were going they must eat before they left.
He said he wanted everybody to eat all he wanted, and I remember the
ham, eggs, chicken, and other good things we had at that dinner. Then
after the dinner he spoke to all of us and said, 'You have nowhere to
go, nothin' to live on, but go out on my other plantation and build you
some shacks.'

"He gave them homes and did not charge any rent. He bought nails and
lumber for them, but he would not build the houses. Some stayed with
him for fifteen years; some left. He gave them cows to milk. He said
the children must not perish.

"Marster was a mighty good man, a feelin' man. He cri