“Not only did some slaves vow to protect their “white folks,” as though the imminent arrival of the Yankees required a reaffirmation of loyalty, but they did what they could to ensure their safety. Preparing for the Union soldiers, a maid in Mary Chesnut’s household urged her mistress to burn the diary she had been keeping lest it fall into the hands of the enemy. During the siege of Vicksburg, Mary Ann Loughborough, along with her daughter and servants, took refuge in a cave and remained there during the Yankee bombardment; one of the servants stood guard, gun in hand, assuring his mistress that anyone who entered “would have to go over his body first.”
― Leon F. Litwack,Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

“Some of them were scarred from head to foot where they had been whipped. One man’s back was nearly all one scar, as if the skin had been chopped up and left to heal in ridges. Another had scars on the back of his neck, and from that all the way to his heels every little ways; but that was not such a sight as the one with the great solid mass of ridges from his shoulders to his hips. That beat all the antislavery sermons ever yet preached.”
― Leon F. Litwack,Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

“Sam and Evaline Brodie came out on the porch and stood side by side facing their more than 150 slaves. “You could hear a pin drop,” Mary recalled, “everything was so quiet.” After greeting them, the master explained why he had called them together. “Men, women and children, you are free. You are no longer my slaves. The Yankees will soon be here.” There was no more to be said. The master and mistress went back into the house, picked up two large armchairs, placed them on the porch facing the road, and sat down to wait. “In about an hour,” Mary recalled, “there was one of the blackest clouds coming up the avenue from the main road. It was the Yankee soldiers.”
― Leon F. Litwack,Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery