Charles Ennis informs me that he was sixty-two years old last June; that
he was the slave of Mr. G. C. McBee, who kept the ferry on the Holston
river, fifteen miles from Knoxville Tennessee; that he has often ferried
the Hon. Messrs. Brownlow and Maynard over the river; that he learned to
read when a small boy, and that he is now a preacher and teacher. He is
the most intelligent colored man I have seen at Andersonville. He says:
"My wife has been a midwife for many years, and has attended upon a
good many white and colored women in child-birth. Last year we
lived in Mitchell County, and Mr. Henry Adams, of Baker County,
sent for her to attend his wife, who was about to be confined. The
child was born and did well. After the riot at Camilla we were
afraid to remain in Mitchell County. I lived within three miles of
Camilla, and a good many of the dead were very near me, but I did
not see any of them. I was afraid to go from home. Dr. Sanders, who
attended upon those who were shot, told me that more than fifty
were killed and wounded. Mr. Adams said his wife liked my wife so
well that he wanted us to go to Houston County with him, and he
would pay our expenses there; and then he would certainly get me a
school, and I could live on his place with my wife, and he would
pay her $50 a year wages. I told him we would not engage by the
year, but only by the month, so long as we could agree. Mr. Robert
Adams, his uncle, was his partner, and managed the plantation. On
the 19th of January, 1869, he told my wife he wanted breakfast very
early, as he was going to attend the burying of his nephew's wife
next morning. She got up before day and got it, and I carried it to
him and he ate it by candle light. After breakfast, as my wife was
going to milk, he came out doors, and when he saw her he said: 'O
you d----d old b----h, I have catched up to you, you G----d d----d
old rogue,' and a good deal more of the same sort. I was surprised
at this, as I knew she had got the breakfast all right, and I had
carried it in to him. I went out and asked him in a mild manner,
'Mr. Adams, what is the matter? what has she done?' He made no
reply at all, but rushed at me and caught me by the hair and
commenced beating me. He struck me several times on the head. I
made no resistance at all, but said, 'Mr. Adams, I will make you
pay, for this.' This made him still worse, and he took out his
knife and said he would give me something to make him pay for--he
would kill me.
"Henry Ottrecht, a German, and a colored boy named Wash caught him
and begged him not to kill me, and told me to promise him that I
would not report him. He held on to me until I promised him that I
would not report him, and then let me go. He told these men that he
would have killed me if they had not prevented him. As he started
away to attend the burying of his nephew's wife, he said to me,
'Now you may go to Perry,' (the county seat,) 'and report me if you
want; but if you do I'll be d----d if I don't kill you.' At night
my wife heard him tell Charles Evart, a freedman, about the scrape,
and he said he would have killed me if they had not held him, and
he would kill me anyway, if I reported him. I was a slave until
freed the by war, but I never received such treatment during all my
life as a slave. I waited on officers in the Confederate army from
1862 until the surrender. The last six months I was with Lt. Col.
Jones, Second Georgia Reserves, at Andersonville. I never received
a blow or a harsh word from one of them. I have traveled a great
deal before and since the war. I know that the colored people are
more brutally treated now than they were in slavery times. A great
many more are beaten, wounded and killed now than then. I know a
great many cases where they have been beaten to death with clubs,
killed with knives and dirks, shot and hung. We have no protection
at all from the laws of Georgia. We had rather die than go back
into slavery, but we are worse treated than we ever were before. We
cannot protect ourselves; we want the Government to protect us. A
great many freedmen have told me that we should be obliged to rise
and take arms and protect ourselves, but I have always told them
this would not do; that the whole South would then come against us
and kill us off, as the Indians have been killed off. I have always
told them the best way was for us to apply to the Government for
protection, and let them protect us."
ANDERSONVILLE, GA., _February 10, 1869_.