Sebert Douglas lived in Kentucky before and during the Civil War. In this excerpt, he gives several brief recollections: of Morgan’s raid, enslaved persons who joined the Union Army, examples of KKK violence, and what he did after emancipation.
I remember [Confederate General John Hunt] Morgan’s Raid. I don’t remember what year it was but I remember a right smart about it. Cumberland Gap was where they met. The Rebs and Yankees both came and took things from old master. I remember three horses they took as well. Yankees had tents in the yard. They were in the yard right in front of the Methodist church.
My mother was Mrs. Hood’s slave, and when she married she took my mother along and I was born on her place. I was the carriage boy in slave times. My father did the driving and I was the waiting boy. I opened the gates.
I remember Billy Chandler and Lewis Rodman ran off and joined the Yankees but they came back after the war was over.
Pattyrollers were about the same as the Ku Klux. The Ku Klux would take the roof off the colored folks’ houses and take their bedding and make ’em go back where they came from.
We stayed right there with old master for two or three years, then we went to the country and farmed for ourselves.
I went to school just long enough to read and write. I never seen any use for figures until I married and went to farming.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Sebert Douglas
82 years old
Bernice Bowden
Gover Hood
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Pine Bluff, AK
Arkansas
Lebanon, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Civil War, Emancipation, Violence,
First person, dialect, Klan/mob violence, Union soldiers,
William Ball Williams, III fought for the Union army in the Civil War. In this excerpt, he describes the experience of being a formerly enslaved person in the Union army and the fear he always lived in.
I ran away to Louisville to join the Yankees one day. I was scared to death all the time. They put us in front to shield themselves. They said they were fighting for us–for our freedom. Piles of them were killed. I got a flesh wound. I’m scarred up some. We got plenty to eat. I was in two or three hot battles. I wanted to quit but they would catch them and shoot them if they left. I didn’t know how to get out and get away. I mustered out at Jacksonville, Florida and walked every step of the way back. When I got back it was fall of the year. My folks were still at my master’s. I was on picket guard at Jacksonville, Florida. We fought a little at Pensacola, Florida.
William Emmons spent much of his early life enslaved. He also fought in the Civil War, which he describes below, including being threatened while on the way to enlist, getting injured in battle, and the celebrations that followed the announcement of victory. He finishes by describing briefly the work he did after emancipation.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
I left and joined the army when I was 18. But forty of us from the plantation around near Carlisle went at the same time. When we went off for the army, going down a dusty road, three white fellers we knew came a riding up, and said, “Where are you [redacted] goin?” We told them we were going to war and they tried to make us go back to the plantation. We told them we’d kill them sure if they kept on meddling with us, and they got scared and let us alone.
In one the battles I got shot in the left hand, and I tied it up myself. The captain he noticed it one day, and he asked to see it. Then he sent me to the hospital. They thought they’d have to take my hand off, but I didn’t want them to that. So they kept me in the hospital for about thirty days and doctored it, and finally, I was back in the lines fighting.
The day we were emancipated we were at Petersburg, Virginia, and I never heard as much shouting and hollering in my life. When the war was over, I went back to Emmonds plantation, and they asked me what I was going to do now that I was free. I told them I was going to work, but they told me no free [ ]could stay on the plantation.
I went to Mason County and hired to a Major Read. He was an abolitionist and went about the country trying to get the plantation owners to hire the free slaves and help make good citizens of them. Major Read paid me $20.00 a month, and board and clothes. I was able to save a good little sum, and I left and went up to Ripley.
In this third person narrative, the interviewer first describes how Alex Woodson (who is referred to as “Uncle Alex”) was sold. The interviewer then documents several stories of enslaved people during the Civil War, before briefly referencing emancipation.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
…[Alex Woodson] was a good-sized boy, possibly 7 years or more when Freedom was declared. His master was “Old Master” Sterrett who had about a 200-acre place and whose son in law Tom Williams ran a store on this place. When Williams married Sterrett’s daughter he was given Uncle Alex and his mother and brother as a present. Williams was then known as “Young Master.”
When war came Old Master gave his (Woodson’s) mother a big roll of bills, “greenbacks as big as your arm”, to keep for him, and was forced to leave the neighborhood. After the war… [Alex Woodson’s mother] returned the money to him intact.
Uncle Alex remembers his mother taking him and other children and running down the river bank and hiding in the woods all night when the soldiers came. They were [Confederate General] Morgan’s men and took all available cattle and horses in the vicinity and beat [searched] the woods looking for Yankee soldiers. Uncle Alex said he saw Morgan at a distance on his big horse and he “was sure a mighty fine looker.”
Sometimes the Yankee soldiers would come riding along and they took things too.
When the [Civil] War was over old Master came back home and the [redacted] continued to live on at the place as usual, except for a few [formerly enslaved people] that wanted to go North…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Alex Woodson
Unknown (80-85)
Iris Cook
“Old Master” Sterrett, Tom Williams
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
New Albany, IN
IN
Woodsonville, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Civil War, Emancipation, Economics
First Person, Third Person, Dialect, Sold, Hired Out, Hart County
Scott Mitchell lived through the Civil War, though he does not know his age. Here, he briefly describes his recollection of the war and stories of lynchings and hangings that took place during that time.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
Yes, I remember the Civil War, because I was living in Christian County where I was born, right with my master and mistress, Captain Hester and his wife. I was raised on a farm right with the, then I left there.
Yes, Captain Hester traded my mother and my sister, ’twas in 1861, he sent them to Mississippi. When they were away from him about two years, he bought them back. Yes, he was good to us. I was my mistress’ boy. I looked after her, and she made all of my clothes, and she knitted my socks, because I was her [redacted].
Yes, I was twenty years old when I was married.
I remember I was a boy when they had the Civil War. I remember there was a brick office where they hanged colored folks. Yes, the blood was a-streaming down. Sometimes they hung them by their feet, sometimes they hung them by their thumbs.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Scott Mitchell
Unknown
Margaret Bishop
Captain Hester
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Breathitt County, KY
Kentucky
Christian County, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Civil War, Violence,
First person, witnessed extreme cruelty, Klan/mob violence,
Kate Baumont was very young when slavery ended, but she has specific memories from her childhood, which she shares. This excerpt describes a story of an enslaver who married and ran away with one of the enslaved males on the plantation. She goes on to describe the reactions and impact this had on the enslaver’s family.
A lot of men from our place went to war. I had two uncles who went. It was nothing to see soldiers in our neighborhood. When the war was over, Mr. Preston gave all his slaves deeds for so much land, and built them each a little four-room cottage. Some of them folks are still on that piece of land.
Preston’s slaves were the same as free in those times. The ones on his farm, they tended their own land and was their own boss. Folks said he let his enslaved be free, and some of them talked a lot and said that when his daughter married.
Tony and Becky Eubanks enslaved John Eubanks during the period described in this excerpt. The Eubanks family supported the Union during the Civil War and allowed the men they enslaved to join the Union army, which John Eubanks chose to do, joining Company K of the 108th Kentucky Infantry Regiment – a unit of Black soldiers who volunteered to fight. At the time of the interview, John Eubanks was the only surviving Civil War veteran in his town. In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts John Eubanks’s experiences during the Civil War in the third person.
The excerpts below provide teachers a unique opportunity to consider perspective and decisions made by an interviewer. The interviewer Archie Koritz submitted two separate documents for his interview with John Eubanks.
The first, featured in “Part 1” below is written in the third person. In the excerpt, Archie Koritz lists John Eubanks experiences as a Union soldier during the Civil War.
The second interview is labeled “Part 2” and is written in the first person. The excerpt from this interview covers the same content as that in “Part 1.” The reader can speculate that “Part 2” is similar to a transcript of the interview and “Part 1” is closer to a report of the interview submitted by interviewer Archie Koritz.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
Barron County, First Person, Third Person, Dialect, Whipped, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable
Excerpt:
…Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, when the north seemed to be losing, someone conceived the idea of forming… [Black] regiments and as an inducement to the slaves, they offered them freedom if they would join the Union forces. John’s mistress and master told him that if he wished to join the Union forces, he had their consent and would not have to run away like other slaves were doing. At the beginning of the war, John was twenty-one years of age. When Lincoln freed the slaves by his Emancipation Proclamation, John was promptly given his freedom by his master and mistress.
John decided to join the northern army which was located at Bowling Green, Kentucky, a distance of thirty-five miles from Glasgow where John was living. He had to walk the entire thirty-five miles. Although he fails to remember all the units that he was attached to, he does remember that it was part of [Union] General Sherman’s army. His regiment started with Sherman on his famous march through Georgia, but for some reason unknown to John, shortly after the campaign was on its way, his regiment was recalled and sent elsewhere.
His regiment was near Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the time [Confederate General] Lee surrendered…When Lee surrendered there was much shouting among the troops and John was one of many put to work loading cannons on boats to be shipped up the river…
When [Confederate] General Morgan, the famous southern raider, crossed the Ohio on his raid across southern Indiana, John was one of the…[Black] fighters who after heavy fighting, forced Morgan to recross the river and retreat back to the south. He also participated in several skirmishes with the cavalry troops commanded by the famous [Confederate General] Nathan Bedfored Forrest, and was a member of the…[Black] garrison at Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi which was assaulted and captured. This resulted in a massacre of the [redacted] soldiers. John was in several other fights, but as he says, “Never once got a skin hurt.”…
[Part 2: What follows is a different version of the interview, recorded by the same interviewer, but this time in the first person. Below are excerpts that cover the same topics described in Part 1.]
…I was twenty-one when war broke out. Master Eubanks said to me, ‘You all don’t need to run away if you all want to join up with the army.’ He’d say, ‘There would be a fine if slaves ran off. You all don’t have to run off, go right on and I do not pay that fine.’ He said, ‘Enlist in the army but don’t run off.’…
We were infantry and pretty soon we got into plenty of fights, but not a scratch hit me. We chased the cavalry. We ran them all night and next morning the Captain said, ‘They broke down.’ When we rest, he says ‘See they don’t trick you.’ I say, ‘We got all the army men together. We’ll hold them back ’til help comes.’
We didn’t have any tents, slept on naked ground in wet and cold and rain. Most of the time we were hungry, But we win the war and Master Eubanks tells us we are no more his property, we’re free now…
In this excerpt, which the interviewer records in the first person, Jane Simpson describes how her enslaver whipped her, how her enslaver responded to Union troops during the Civil War, and how enslaved people were treated upon emancipation. The excerpt ends with Jane Simpson telling of a metaphor enslaved people used to describe the end of enslavement.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
… I never got more than three or four whippings, but they cut the blood out of me every one of them times. If ole Miss got mad about something, just anything at all, she’d have you whipped, when maybe you had not done a thing, just to satisfy her spiteful feeling. I never can forget, I was sitting upstairs in ole Miss’ house, quilting, when the first Yankee army boat went to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Ole Miss made me get right up and go get her children out of school and bring them right home. She was scared to death mostly, but the boat went right on. It didn’t even stop…
I had an uncle who was buying his freedom from Master Chris and was almost paid out when Master Chris died, but he didn’t know anything about keeping receipts, so he was put on the auction block and sold again…
The [redacted] didn’t expect nothing from the white folks when they got set free. They were so glad to get set free, they were just glad to be loose. I never even heard of white folks giving [redacted] nothing. Most of the time they didn’t even give them what they were supposed to give them after they were free. They were so mad because they had to set them free, they just stayed mean as they would allow them to be anyhow, and are yet, most of them. I used to hear old slaves pray and ask God when would the bottom rail be the top rail, and I wondered what on earth they were talking about. They were talking about when they are going to get out from under bondage. Course I know now…
In the full version of the interview, the interviewer recounts in the first person the cruelty enslavers inflicted on Hannah Davidson and the other enslaved people. Hanna Davidson describes a life of continuous work and repeated whippings. Enslavers Emmette and Susan Meriwether kept Hannah Davidson, her sister, and others enslaved for over twenty one years after they were legally free. In this excerpt, recorded in the first person, Hannah Davidson describes the memories of the Civil War, the fear the KKK instilled in formerly enslaved people, and a contemporary exchange about slavery with a White stranger.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
… It is best not to talk about them. The things that my sister Mary and I suffered were so terrible that people would not believe them. It is best not to have such things in our memory…
My master kept me and my sister Mary twenty-two long years after we were supposed to be free. Work, work, work. I don’t think my sister and I ever went to bed before twelve o’clock at night. We never got a penny. They could have spared it, too; they had enough… We didn’t even know we were free. We had to wash the white people’s feet when they took their shoes off at night–the men and women…
All I know about the Civil War was that it was goin’ on. I heard talk about killing and so on, but I didn’t know anything about it….
I remember when Yankee soldiers came riding through the yard. I was scared and ran away crying. I can see them now. Their swords hung at their sides and their horses walked proud as if they walked on their hind legs. The master was in the field trying to hide his money and guns and things. The soldiers said, ‘We won’t hurt you, child.’ It made me feel wonderful.
What I call the Ku Klux were those people who met at night and if they heard anybody saying you were free, they would take you out at night and whip you. They were the plantation owners. I never saw them ride, but I heard about them and what they did. My master used to tell us he wished he knew who the Ku Kluxers were. But he knew, all right, I used to wait on the table and I heard them talking. ‘Gonna lynch another [redacted] tonight!’
…Well, slavery’s over and I think that’s a grand thing. A white lady recently [in the 1930s] asked me, ‘Don’t you think you were better off under the white people?’ I said ‘What you talkin’ about? The birds of the air have their freedom. I don’t know why she should ask me that anyway…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Hannah Davidson
1852 (approx. 85)
K. Osthimer
Emmette and Susan Meriwether
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Toledo, OH
OH
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Violence, Civil War, KKK
Ballard County, First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Union Troops
Born enslaved, Dr. George Washington Buckner moved to Indianapolis after the Civil War, where he attended the only school for Black students in the city. He later completed a teacher training program and taught Black students before earning a medical degree and becoming a doctor. In 1913, he accepted President Woodrow Wilson’s nomination and served as the American Minister [Ambassador] to Liberia, living there for several years. See the full document for a detailed description of Dr. George Washington Buckner’s education and career after enslavement.
In this interview, recorded in the third person, the interviewer shares Dr. George Washington Buckner’s memories of the Civil War.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
…A story told by Dr. Buckner relates an evening at the beginning of the Civil War. “I had heard my parents talk of the war but it did not seem real to me until one night when mother came to the pallet where we slept and called to us to ‘Get up and tell our uncles good-bye.’ Then four startled little children arose. Mother was standing in the room with a candle or a sort of torch made from grease drippings and old pieces of cloth, (these rude candles were in common use and afforded but poor light) and there stood her four brothers, Jacob, John, Bill, and Isaac all with the light of adventure shining upon their [faces] … They were starting away to fight for their liberties [freedom] and we were greatly impressed.”
Dr. Buckner stated that officials thought Jacob entirely too aged to enter the service as he had a few scattered white hairs but he remembers he was brawny and unafraid. Isaac was too young but the other two uncles were accepted. One never returned because he was killed in battle but one fought throughout the war and was never wounded. He remembers how the white men were indignant because the [redacted] were allowed to enlist [join the army]…