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