Do you want to hear how I ran away and joined the Yankees? You know Abraham Lincoln declared freedom in ’63, first day of January. In October ’63, I ran away and went to Pine Bluff [Arkansas] to get to the Yankees. . . . The young boy what cut the whips—Jerry—he came along with me. . . . Two days and two nights we traveled. That boy, he so cold and hungry he want to fall out by the way, but I drug him on. When we got to the Yankee camp all our troubles were over. We got all the contraband we could eat.
Were there more runaways there? Oh, Lordy, yes ma’am. Hundreds, I reckon.
–Boston Blackwell
Read the excerpt and then answer the following question.
Why did this runaway almost not make it to the Yankee camp?
The Yankees were already in camp.
His companion wanted to stop running.
He was getting hungry.
He worried that the Yankees would make him fight