"We alls believed dat it wuz bad luck ter turn back if yer started anywher, if yo' did bad luck would sho' foller yer; but ter turn yo' luck, go back and make a cross in yo' path and spit in it."
Autobiography of Richard Slaughter
(Given by himself as an oral account during an interview between himself and writer, December 27, 1936.) Claude W. Anderson—Hampton, Virginia
"Come in, son. Have a seat, who are you and how are you? My life? Oh! certainly you don't want to hear that! Well, son, have you been born again? Do you know Christ? Well, that's good. Good for you. Amen. I'm glad to hear it. Always glad to talk to any true Christian liver. God bless you, son.
"I was born January 9, 1849 on the James at a place called Epps Island, City Point. I was born a slave. How old am I! Well, there's the date. Count it up for yourself. My owner's name was Dr. Richard S. Epps. I stayed there until I was around thirteen or fourteen years old when I came to Hampton.
"I don't know much about the meanness of slavery. There was so many degrees in slavery, and I belonged to a very nice man. He never sold but one man, fur's I can remember, and that was cousin Ben. Sold him South. Yes. My master was a nice old man. He ain't living now. Dr. Epps died and his son wrote me my age. I got it upstairs in a letter now.
"It happened this a-way. Hampton was already burnt when I came here. I came to Hampton in June 1862. The Yankees burned Hampton and the fleet went up the James River. My father and mother and cousins went aboard the Meritanza with me. You see, my father and three or four men left in the darkness first and got aboard. The gun boats would fire on the towns and plantations and run the white folks off. After that they would carry all the colored folks back down here to Old Point and put 'em behind the Union lines. I know the names of all the gunboats that came up the river. Yessir. There was the Galena, we called her the old cheese box, the Delware, the Yankee, the Mosker, and the Meritanza which was the ship I was board of. That same year the Merrimac and Monitor fought off Newport News Point. No, I didn't see it. I didn't come down all the way on the gunboat. I had the measles on the Meritanza and was put off at Harrison's Landing. When McCellan retreated from Richmond through the peninsula to Washington, I came to Hampton as a government water boy.
"While I was aboard the gunboat, she captured a rebel gunboat at a place called Drury's Bluff. When I first came to Hampton, there were only barracks where the Institute is; when I returned General Armstrong had done rite smart.