“Come with us, Johnny, and go with us up North, and we will set you free,” said the soldier, his blue uniform cap tilted over his right eye, his knapsack on his back, his long musket over his shoulder. The ten-year-old, astride the mule Nell, thought it wondrous that he knew his name. For almost two years he’d marveled at the troops marching along the road skirting the Clover Bottom plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived. And now they wanted him to join them. Without a thought, he slipped off Nell’s back. It was done, the year, 1862.

Such changed the direction of John McCline’s life, narrator of Slavery in the Clover Bottoms (Knoxville, University Press, 1998). The Thirteenth Michigan Volunteers became his new home for the rest of the Civil War. A quick learner, affable, willingness, friend with suffering: such childhood traits he continued developing during years of serving others in the white world until his death in 1948.

One of his employers requested him to write his story, given the keen memory of his past. McCline set to work, but for whatever reason, only took it through the war’s end; a six-page addendum touched upon his remaining years. Unfortunately, his feelings or observations of the conflicted history swirling around him are not referenced.

However, for Civil War buffs this narrative provides rich information about Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas and the conclusion of the war. From still another perspective, we evidence the life of a simple honest man, John McCline, among the lowly ones that Jesus so loved.