Vicksburg: "We Saw It From The Slave Quarters"

The following account was recording in the early 20th Century during the Slave Narrative Project, an effort to collect the oral history of men and women who had experienced slavery, emancipation and the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Litt Young shared his story about being enslaved near Vicksburg, Mississippi, and some memories of the Civil War. 

The spelling and punctuation is original to the way it was written in the Slave Narrative Project. 

[Introduction] Litt Young was born in 1850, in Vicksburg, Miss., a slave of Martha Gibbs, on whose property the old battleground at Vicksburg was located. Litt was freed in 1865, in Vicksburg, and was refugeed by his owner to Harrison Co., Texas. He was freed again on June 19, 1865, and found work as a sawmill hand, a tie cutter and a woodcutter during the construction of the Texas & Pacific Railroad from Marshall to Texarkana. The remainder of his life, with the exception of five years on a farm, has been spent as a section hand. Litt lives alone on the Powder Mill Road, two and a half miles north of Marshall, and is supposed by a $12.00 monthly pension from the government

"I's born in 1850 in Vicksburg, and belonged to Missy Martha Gibbs. Her place was on Warner Bayou and the old battlefield was right there in her field. She had two husbands, one name Heckley and he died of yellow fever. Then she marries a Dr. Gibbs, what was a Yankee, but she didn't know it till after the war.

"Massa Heckley bought my daddy from a...trader up north somewheres, but my mammy allus belonged to the Gibbs family. I had a sister and two brothers, but the Gibbs sold them to the Simmons and I never seed 'em any more. 

"Old Missy Gibbs had so many [slaves] she had to have a lots of quarters. They was good houses, weatherboarded with cypress and had brick chimneys. We'd pull green grass and bury it awhile, then bile it to make mattresses. That made it black like in auto seats. Missy was a big, rich Irishwoman and not scared of no man. She lived in a big, fine house, and buckled on two guns and come out to the place most every morning. She out-cussed a man when things didn't go right.... She had a white man for overseer what live in a good house close to the quarters. It was whitewashed and had glass windows. She built a nice church with glass windows and a brass cupola for the blacks and a [mulatto] man preached to us. She had him preach how we was to obey our master and missy if we want to go to Heaven, but when she wasn't there, he came out with straight preachin' from the Bible.

"Good gracious, what we had to eat. They give us plenty, turnip greens and hog-jowl and peas and cornbread and milk by the barrels. Old women what was too old to work in the field done the cook' and tended the babies. They cooked the cornbread in a oven and browned it like cake. When they pulled it out, all the chillen was standin' round, smackin' they lips. Every Christmas us got a set white lewell clothes and a pair brogan shoes and the done us the whole year, or us go naked.

"When that big bell rung at four o'clock you'd better get up, 'cause the overseer was standin' there with a whippin' strap if you was late. My daddy got a [whipping] most every morning for oversleeping. Them mules was standin' in the field at daylight, waitin' to see how to plow a straight furrow. If a [man] was a 500 pound cotton picker and didn't weigh up that much at night, that was not gitting his task and he got a whipping. The last weigh' was done by lightin' a candle to see the scales.

"Us have small dances Saturday nights and ring plays and banjo and fiddle playin' and knockin' bones. There was fiddles make from gourds and banjoes from sheep hides. I 'member one song, 'Coffee grows on white oak trees, River flows with brandy—e.' That song was started in Vicksburg by the Yankee soldiers when they left to go home, 'cause they so glad war was over.

"Missy have a big, steam sawmill there on Warner Bayou, where the steamboats come up for lumber. It was right there where the bayou empties in the Mississippi. I 'remember seein' one man sold there at the sawmill. He hit his massa in the head with a singletree and kilt him and they's fixin' to hang him, but a man promised to buy him if he'd promise to be good. He give $500 for him.

"Dr. Gibbs was a powerful man in Vicksburg. He was the 'casion of them Yanks takin' 'vantage of Vicksburg like they done. 'Fore the war he'd say to missy, 'Darling, you oughtn't whip them poor, black folks so hard. They is gwine be free like us some day.' Missy say, 'Shut up. Sometimes I 'lieve you is a Yankee, anyway.'

"Some folks say Dr. Gibbs was workin' for the North all the time 'fore the war, and when he doctored for them durin' the war, they say they knowed it. The 'Federates have a big camp there at Vicksburg and cut a big ditch out at the edge of town. Some say Gen. Grant was knowin' all how it was fixed, and that Dr. Gibbs let him know.

"The Yankees stole the march on the 'Federates and waited till they came out the ditch and mowed 'em down. The 'Federates didn't have no chance, 'cause they didn't have no cannon, jus' cap and ball rifles. The main fight started 'bout four in the morning and held on till 'bout ten. Dead soldiers was layin' thick on the ground by then. After the fight, the yanks cut the buttons off the coats of them that was kilt.

"I seed the Yankee gunboats when they came to Vicksburg. All us...went down to the river to see 'em. They told us to git plumb away, 'cause they didn't know which way they was gwine to shoot. Gen. Grant come to Vicksburg and he blowed a horn and them cannons began to shoot and jus' kept shootin'. When the Yankees come to Vicksburg, a big, red flag was flyin' over the town. Five or six hours after them cannons started shootin' they pulled it down and histed a big white one. We saw it from the quarters.

"After the surrender the Yanks arrested my old missy and brought her out to the farm and locked her up in the black folks church. She had a guard day and night. They fed her hard-tack and water for three days 'fore they turned her a-loose. Then she freed all her [slaves]. 'Bout that time Massa Gibbs run out of corn to feed he stock and he took my daddy and bunch of [slaves] and left to buy a boatload of corn. Missy seized a bunch us...and started to Texas. She had Irishmen guards, with rifles, to keep us from runnin' away. She left with ten six-mule teams and one ox cook wagon. Them what was able walked all the way from Vicksburg to Texas. We camped at night and they tied them to trees. We couldn't git away with them Irishmen havin' rifles.... Missy finally locates 'bout three miles from Marshall and we made her first crop and on June 19th, the next year after 'mancipation, she set us free.

"Dr. Gibbs followed her to Texas. He said the Yanks captured his [slaves] and took his lead of corn as they was comin' down the Tennessee River, where it jines the Mississippi. Me and mammy stayed in Texas, and never did see daddy 'gain. When us freed the last time us came to Marshall and I works in a grist mill and shingle mill. I cut ties for 15 cents apiece. I cut wood for the first engines and they paid me $1.25 a cord. I get where I cut three cords a day. I helped clear all the land where Texarkans [Texarkana] is now. When the the railroad a quit using wood, I worked as section hand for $1.25 a day. I farmed five years and never made a cent and went back to the railroad.

"I marries in Marshall so long I done forgot. I raises six gals and has three sets grandchillen. They's all livin' 'cept one. Since my wife died and I's too ailing to work, I's been kept by the pension.

"They had provost law in Marshall when us come to Texas. I allus voted when they let us....

Source:

"Litt Young's Story," Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 4, Sanco-Young, (Library of Congress), Pages 227-231.