Bound Out

I am a negro and was born some time during the war in Elbert County, Ga., and I reckon by this time I must be a little over forty years old. My mother was not married when I was born, and I never knew who my father was. Shortly after the war my mother died, and I was left to the care of my uncle.

Every week my uncle collected my money for me, but it was very little of it that I ever saw. He fed and clothed me, gave me a place to sleep, and allowed me ten or fifteen cents a week for "spending change," as he called it.

I must have been seventeen or eighteen years old before I got tired of that arrangement, and felt that I was man enough to be working for myself and handling my own wages. The other boys about my age were "drawing" their own pay, and they used to laugh at me and call me "Baby" because my old uncle was always on hand to draw my pay.

Worked up by these things, I made a break for liberty. Unknown to my uncle I went off to a neighboring plantation and hired myself out to another man, who agreed to give me forty cents a day and one meal. Bright and early one Monday morning I started for work — but they found it out before sundown.