History Behind the Story: the Big Shoot

When WPA interviewer Clothilde Martin met with Sam Mitchell in Beaufort, South Carolina in the late 1930s, he was eighty-seven, but his recollection of November 7, 1861, the day that the Union Army captured Port Royal and the surrounding Sea Islands, was still vivid.

He recalled, “That Wednesday in November when gun first shoot to Bay Point I thought it been thunder rolling, but they ain’t no cloud. My mother say, “‘Son, that ain’t no thunder, that Yankee come to give you freedom.' I been so glad, I jump up and down and run.’

“My father been splitting rail and Massa come from Beaufort in the carriage and tear by him yelling for the driver. He told the driver to get his eight-oar boat name Tarrify and carry him to Charleston.

“My father he run to the house and tell my mother what Massa say. My mother say, ‘You ain’t going to row no boat to Charleston, you go out that back door and keep a-going.’”

You can read Mitchell’s interview in its entirety on the Library of Congress website; it is part of the Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narrative Project. (Note that I have standardized the spelling of Mitchell’s account, which the interviewer rendered phonetically; I have left the grammar intact.)