Excerpt from Peter Bruner, A Slave's Adventure Toward Freedom

...I then came back to Jonas Parks and remained all night, it was about a mile from home. The next morning about five o'clock I got up and started for Camp Nelson, which was forty-one miles from Irvin. And at eleven o'clock I had gone twenty-one miles and had arrived at Richmond. After I had left Richmond I came upon sixteen colored fellows who were on their way to Camp Nelson and of course I did not get lonesome. I had plenty of company. Just a half hour before sun down we arrived at Camp Nelson and had come forty-one miles in that day. The officers asked me what I wanted there and I told them that I came there to fight the rebels and that I wanted a gun. When I had run off before and wanted to go in the army and fight they said that they did not want any darkies, that this was a white man's war. After I had been there about a week they made up a regiment and called it the Twelfth U. S. Heavy Artillery.

        I was enrolled on the twenty-fifth day of July in 1864 to serve three years or during the war, but I only remained two years and a half....