"The slaves weren't expecting nothing. It got out somehow that they were going to give us forty acres and a mule. We all went up in town. They asked me who I belonged to and I told them my master was named Banner. One man said, 'Young man, I would go by my mama's name if I were you.' I told him my mother's name was Banner too. Then he opened a book and told me all the laws. He told me never to go by any name except Banner. That was all the mule they ever give me.
"I started home a year after I got free and made a crop. I had my gear what I had saved on the plantation and went to town to get my mule but there wasn't any mule.
"Before the war you belonged to somebody. After the war you weren't nothin' but a nigger. The laws of the country were made for the white man. The laws of the North were made for man.
"Freedom is better than slavery though. I done seed both sides. I seen darkies chained. If a good nigger killed a white overseer, they wouldn't do nothin' to him. If he was a bad nigger, they'd sell him. They raised niggers to sell; they didn't want to lose them. It was just like a mule killing a man.
"Yellow niggers didn't sell so well. There weren't so many of them as there are now. Black niggers stood the climate better. At least, everybody thought so.
"If a woman didn't breed well, she was put in a gang and sold. They married just like they do now but they didn't have no license. Some people say that they done this and that thing but it's no such a thing. They married just like they do now, only they didn't have no license.
"Ol' man came out on April 9, 1865. and said, 'General Lee's whipped now and dam badly whipped. The war is over. The Yankees done got the country. It is all over. Just go home and hide everything you got. General Lee's army is coming this way and stealing everything they can get their hands on.' But General Lee's army went the other way.
"I saw a sack of money setting near the store. I looked around and I didn't see nobody. So I took it and carried it home. Then I hid it. I heard in town that Jeff Davis was dead and his money was no good. I took out some of the money and went to the grocery and bought some bread and handed her five dollar bill. She said, 'My goodness, Henry, that money is no good; the Yankees have killed it.' And I had done gone all over the woods and hid that money out. There wasn't no money. Nobody had anything. I worked for two bits a day. All our money was dead.
"The Yankees fed the white people with hard tacks (at Liberty, Virginia). All around the country, them that didn't have nothin' had to go to the commissary and get hard tacks.
"I started home. I went to town and rambled all around but there wasn't nothin' for me.