Tennessee Slave Tale or From the Mouth of Babes

murfreesboro girl ITennessee Slave Tale, is the story of what a young girl from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, observed one autumn morning in October of 1863. It was given to soldier-correspondent, Alfred Burnett, embedded with the Union Army, in camp at Triune, Tennessee and eventually published in the Northern Press. Sometimes real history and the rest of the story, comes from the mouths of innocent babes.

“The Slave on the Fence

Hearken to what I now relate,

And on its moral meditate!

A Wagoner, with grist for mill,
Was stalled at bottom of a hill.
A brawny slave passed that way,
So stout he might a lion slay.

I’ll put my shoulder to the wheels,
If you’ll bestir your horse’s heels.
So said the slave, and made
As if to render timely aid.

No, cried the wagoner, stand back!
I’ll take no help from one that’s black;
And, to the slave’s great surprise,
Flourished his whip before his eyes.

Our slave quick skedaddled thence,
And sat upon the wayside fence.
Then went the wagoner to work,
And lashed his horses to a jerk;

But all his efforts were in vain;
With shout, and oath, and whip, and rein,
The wheels budged not a single inch,
And tighter grow the wagoner’s pinch.

Directly there came by a child,
With toiling step, and vision wild,
Father, said she, with hunger dread,
We famish for the want of bread.

Then spake the slave: If you will,
I’ll help your horses to the mill.
The wagoner, in grievous plight,
Now swore and raved with all his might,
Because the slave wasn’t white;

And plainly ordered him to go
To a certain place, that’s down below;

Then, rushing, came the wagoner’s wife,
To save her own and infant’s life;
By robbers was their homestead sacked,
And smoke and blood their pillage tracked.

Here stops our tale. When last observed,
The wagoner was still conserved
In mud, at bottom of the hill,
But bent on getting to the mill;

And hard by, not a rod from thence,
The slave sat upon the fence.”

Bummer

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