When a local Confederate plantation-owner had his slaves freed by a Union unit, their officer had a cutting response to the man’s protests!

>As the 32nd headed back from a scout around the dismantled town of Osceola, Arkansas, with sixty slaves, a master protested that he would be ruined without his slaves. “You will only have to work with your own hands,” their officer loftily replied, “as we have to do in the North,” and there, he said, would be an end to treason. ________________________ **Bonus, from the author’s source:** >”Goddamn,” one Yankeed exclaimed to an elderly master grieving over the loss of his slaves, “these must be your grandchildren, the way you’re carrying on about them!” (*UHS*, p. 199.) ________________________ **Source:** Ward, Andrew. “Contrabands.” *River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War*. Viking, 2005. 47. Print. **Original Source Listed:** *Davenport Gazette*, January 17, 1863.