Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/120

 set him up work making the stocks for the muskets that were turned out for the Southern army. His wife's mistress was hard-hearted and quick-tempered. Once or twice she attempted to chastise America's mother. But the slave-woman had just as much spirit and more strength than her mistress, and resisted punishment with such success, that the latter was thereafter obliged to content herself, when enraged at their mother, with visiting her wrath upon the children. Once she struck America a blow that made a bleeding gash quite across the face. The children were so fair in complexion that their mistress sometimes talked of selling their mother, and adopting and bringing up America's brother as her own son. Afterwards she sold both mother and children to the man who owned America's father.

The neighbourhood of Murfreesboro was the scene of some of the hottest fighting of the war, and among America's early recollections is the remembrance of balls whistling into their yard, when the skirmishers of the two armies met in the town; of seeing men drop from their horses as the sharpshooters picked them off while they were riding through the streets; of the men wounded in the memorable battle of Stone River, who filled their little house, rebel and Federal side by side in the same room, their old enmity forgotten in their truce of pain and death.

In the changing fortunes of war the Union troops evacuated the town, and America's father seized the opportunity to go with them to freedom. By the