The early spring of 1863 was a difficult one for Kate Stone and her family. Yankees had infested the area near Milliken’s Bend for months, but their numbers were growing in anticipation of yet another attempt to take Vicksburg. As more Union troops filled the area, more slaves decided to run off to their lines, often in broad daylight, unafraid. They knew their “masters” were powerless to stop them.

Yankee foraging parties routinely menaced civilians in the area, taking horses, corn, fodder, and any other goods they could take with them. Often bands of slaves would follow in their wake, leaving the plantation behind, with no intention of returning.

The residents of Madison and Carroll Parishes – most of them, now, women, children, and old men – lived in dread and fear. Though resilient and stubbornly confident in the Confederate cause, their immediate personal future was uncertain.

Kate and her family were shaken to the core when on March 26, while visiting their friends, the Hardison’s – a group of three armed black men grabbed two white men in the front lawn and held them at gunpoint. One black man strode into the house, cursing, waving his pistol and threatening a sleeping baby. When Mrs. Hardison ran in panic to the child, the man merely laughed, then walked over to Kate. She and her Little Sister froze with fear. He laughed again, then left. As he did so, he left a trail of white powder behind him, which Kate and the Hardisons thought was poison. The men threw some matches on the floor, but the women quickly extinguished them. The men left, threatening to come back and finish the job of burning the house down. No one at the Hardisons was harmed.

The Hardisons and Kate rushed back to Brokenburn for safety, but Amanda Stone, Kate’s mother, had had enough and promised to evacuate her family to the west. Within a week, they were on the move. By April 16, they had reached Joe’s Bayou, and would soon make their way to Delhi, then Monroe.

Source: Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone 1861-1868 edited by John Q. Anderson, p. 188, 190, 194-197. Still in print through LSU Press.