George Strauter tried to teach them all how to be good farmers and be
saving. Warren knew war was going on but he didn't see any of it. His
father came home several times. He was off building forts. He said he
remembered a big "hurly-burly" and he heard 'em saying, "Thank God I'ze
free as a jay bird." He didn't know why they were fighting so he didn't
know then why they were saying that.

George Strauter had a shop at the fork of the roads. He had his own gin.
They sold cotton and bought provisions at Augusta, Georgia. They made
some of their meal and flour and raised all their meat and made enough
lard to do the year around.

He heard them talking about the "Yankees" burning up Augusta, but he saw
where they had burned Hamburg, South Carolina or North Augusta they call
it.

After they were free he remembers his mother bundling up her things and
her family and them all going in an ox cart to Augusta to live. Warren's
mother washed, cooked and ironed for a living. Her husband went off and
lived with another woman after freedom. Warren was about eleven years
old then. The Government furnished food for them too. One thing that
distressed Warren was _the way people died for more than a year_. He saw
five or six coffins piled up on a wagon being taken out to be buried. He
thought it was changing houses and changing ways of living. They didn't
have shoes and warm clothes and weren't fed from white folks smoke
house. _Lots of the slaves had Consumption and died right now_. Stout
men and women didn't live two years after they were freed. Lots of them
said they didn't like that freedom and wanted to go back but the masters
were broke and couldn't keep many of them if they went back.