“He wasn’t a mean man. He was good to his folks. We stayed there two years after surrender and when I come to this country, I left some of my uncles on that same place.
“I remember a white gentlemen in South Carolina would just jump his horse over the fence and run over the folks, white and black, cotton and all. He was a rich man and he’d just pay ’em off and go on. He wouldn’t put up the fence neither. He was a hunter—a sporting man.
“Me? Yes ma’am, I used to vote—the Republican ticket. We ain’t nothin’ now, we can’t vote. I never had any trouble ’bout votin’ here but in the old country we had some trouble. The Democrats tried to keep us from votin’. Had to have the United States soldiers to open the way. That was when Hays and Wheeler was runnin’.
“Here in the South the colored folks is free and they’re not free. The white folks gets it all anyway—in some places.
“But they ain’t nobody bothered me in all my life—here or there.
“I went to school some after the war. Didn’t have very much, but I learned to read and write and ’tend to my own affairs.
“I have done farm work all my life and some public work. I got the same ambition to work as I used to have but I can’t hold it. I start out but I just can’t hold it.
“Just to pass my opinion of the younger generation, some of ’em level-headed, but seems to me like they is a little rougher than they was in my day.
“I think every one should live as an example for those coming behind.”