"My wife has been a midwife for many years, and has attended upon a good many white and colored women in child-birth. Last year we lived in Mitchell County, and Mr. Henry Adams, of Baker County, sent for her to attend his wife, who was about to be confined. The child was born and did well. After the riot at Camilla we were afraid to remain in Mitchell County. I lived within three miles of Camilla, and a good many of the dead were very near me, but I did not see any of them. I was afraid to go from home. Dr. Sanders, who attended upon those who were shot, told me that more than fifty were killed and wounded. Mr. Adams said his wife liked my wife so well that he wanted us to go to Houston County with him, and he would pay our expenses there; and then he would certainly get me a school, and I could live on his place with my wife, and he would pay her $50 a year wages. I told him we would not engage by the year, but only by the month, so long as we could agree. Mr. Robert Adams, his uncle, was his partner, and managed the plantation. On the 19th of January, 1869, he told my wife he wanted breakfast very early, as he was going to attend the burying of his nephew's wife next morning. She got up before day and got it, and I carried it to him and he ate it by candle light. After breakfast, as my wife was going to milk, he came out doors, and when he saw her he said: 'O you d——d old b——h, I have catched up to you, you G—d d——d old rogue,' and a good deal more of the same sort. I was surprised at this, as I knew she had got the breakfast all right, and I had carried it in to him. I went out and asked him in a mild manner, 'Mr. Adams, what is the matter? what has she done?' He made no reply at all, but rushed at me and caught me by the hair and commenced beating me. He struck me several times on the head. I made no resistance at all, but said, 'Mr. Adams, I will make you pay, for this.' This made him still worse, and he took out his knife and said he would give me something to make him pay for—he would kill me.
"Henry Ottrecht, a German, and a colored boy named Wash caught him and begged him not to kill me, and told me to promise him that I would not report him. He held on to me until I promised him that I would not report him, and then let me go. He told these men that he would have killed me if they had not prevented him. As he started away to attend the burying of his nephew's wife, he said to me, 'Now you may go to Perry,' (the county seat,) 'and report me if you want; but if you do I'll be d——d if I don't kill you.' At night my wife heard him tell Charles Evart, a freedman, about the scrape, and he said he would have killed me if they had not held him, and he would kill me anyway, if I reported him. I was a slave until freed the by war, but I never received such treatment during all my life as a slave. I waited on officers in the Confederate army from 1862 until the surrender. The last six months I was with Lt. Col. Jones, Second Georgia Reserves, at Andersonville. I never received a blow or a harsh word from one of them. I have traveled a great deal before and since the war. I know that the colored people are more brutally treated now than they were in slavery times. A great many more are beaten, wounded and killed now than then. I know a great many cases where they have been beaten to death with clubs, killed with knives and dirks, shot and hung. We have no protection at all from the laws of Georgia. We had rather die than go back into slavery, but we are worse treated than we ever were before. We cannot protect ourselves; we want the Government to protect us. A great many freedmen have told me that we should be obliged to rise and take arms and protect ourselves, but I have always told them this would not do; that the whole South would then come against us and kill us off, as the Indians have been killed off. I have always told them the best way was for us to apply to the Government for protection, and let them protect us."
Andersonville, Ga., February 10, 1869.
WHY I WAS KU KLUXED.
Mr. B. B. Dikes, referred to in the foregoing statement of Floyd Snelson, is not the only claimant who has endeavored to secure possession of the grounds in and around the stockades at Andersonville, Georgia. I should have said that he has entered a suit in the U. S. Court for the possession of these lands, but in the absence of the military he judged the ejectment of the freedmen, and getting possession in the manner I have described, as more sure and speedy than the "law's delay."
A Mr. Crawford claims that the land which lies within and around the south stockade, in which are the hospital sheds, where so many of our soldiers died, where even now the bare ground upon which they lay shows the indenture made by the bodies of our suffering dying soldiers, belongs to certain heirs, and he, too, has been endeavoring to get possession of these grounds. My pastoral visitations led me to the cabins in and around the stockades, that have been built upon the land now claimed by Mr. Crawford. As was most natural, they poured into my ears the sad, the almost incredible, accounts of the wrongs they have suffered "since freedom came," or, as they more frequently expressed it, "since the surrender came through." One of these men came to me in January, in great distress, and told me that the day before he had been notified by Mr. Souber, the magistrate of the district, that he must leave his house by the next Monday night, or he would bring the Sheriff and turn him out. Mr. Souber told him that he had charge of the land for Mr. Crawford, and that he was agoing to fence it in, and raise a cotton crop in and around these stockades. There are thousands who know how this soil has been ensanguined and enriched. I had frequently walked over these grounds, and seen evidences of what is both too indelicate and too horrible to be described. I confess that my indignation was roused to the highest degree. I sat down immediately and wrote a statement of these facts to Hon. J. M. Ashley, and begged him to call on General Grant, and see if there was any power in the Government to prevent these outrages.
The Lieutenant in charge at Andersonville called upon me some days later, and informed me that my letter to Congressman Ashley had been referred, by General Grant to General Meade, who had referred it to him. I furnished him the facts upon which it was based, and also wrote General Meade as follows:
[Copy.]