Sue Chancellor was just fourteen years old at the time of the battle. Her family lived on a plantation in the heart of Chancellorsville. Sue remembered...
"After the Emancipation Proclamation our servants ran away to the Yankees, who were, I think, not very far away in Stafford County."
Slave owners often referred to enslaved people as "servants," but what Sue meant was that the people her family held in slavery were running away into Union lines, just like John Washington did in Fredericksburg.
Though as Sue remembered, some enslaved people were able to run away, many never had the chance. Hester Lewis was also a young girl at the time of the battle, but she was enslaved by the Chancellor family. She would experience the battle alongside the family. If you were enslaved, and heard about the Emancipation Proclamation, but did not know what would happen once you ran away, would you still go?
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