"Sarah Anne, I don't know, unless he means that the niggers
will be free." "O, my God, what shall we do?" "I presume," he said,
"we shall have to put our boys to work and hire help." "But," she
said, "what will the niggers do if they are free? Why, they will
starve if we don't keep them." "Oh, well," he said, "let them wander,
if they will not stay with their owners. I don't doubt that many
owners have been good to their slaves, and they would rather remain
with their owners than wander about without home or country."
My mistress often told me that my father was a planter who owned a
plantation about two miles from ours. He was a white man, born in
Liverpool, England. He died in Lewisville, Alabama, in the year 1875.
I will venture to say that I only saw my father a dozen times, when I
was about four years old; and those times I saw him only from a
distance, as he was driving by the great house of our plantation.
Whenever my mistress saw him going by, she would take me by the hand
and run out upon the piazza, and exclaim, "Stop there, I say! Don't
you want to see and speak to and caress your darling child? She often
speaks of you and wants to embrace her dear father. See what a bright
and beautiful daughter she is, a perfect picture of yourself.
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