If a young, good-looking, husky negro was trustworthy, the family would make him the driver of the family carriage. They would dress him in the best clothes obtainable and with a silk-finished beaver skin hat. The driver sat on a seat on the top and towards the front of the carriage. He was compelled to stay on this seat when waiting for any of the family that he might be driving, regardless of the weather or the length of time that he had to wait.
The mail was carried in the same kind of vehicle with negro drivers. In each town there was a certain rack at which this mail carriage would stop in each village or wherever the designated stop was made. Upon nearing the rack and coming to a stop, the driver would blow a bugle call which could be heard for miles around, and people hearing this bugle would come and get their mail. The Reverend remembers that several of these drivers froze to death during the cold weather, and that in the winter, many times the horses on the mail carriage upon coming to this rack would stop, and the driver would be sitting frozen to death in his seat.
Men would take him down, carefully saving the silk beaver-skin hat for some other driver.
Since the slaves had no votes, they had no interest in politics when they became free and knew nothing about political conditions other than that after the Civil War they were free and had a vote. As a boy the Reverend remembers seeing the white and black soldiers marching on election day.
The politicians would always tell the negroes what was good for them and making it appear that it was for their best interest, and they should vote for him, always giving them the desert first and making them think that they were on the level no matter what the meal might be or what hardships they were causing the negro to suffer. On one instance after the negroes were forbidden to vote they marched in a body to the polls and demanded a Democratic ballot and were then permitted to vote.
Rev. Wamble was twenty-seven years of age before he saw and read his first newspaper. He lived with the Wambles for twenty years after the war, when his father then in partnership with another man, purchased forty acres of land. He attended his first school for a period of two months only in 1871. In 1872 the government built a school on his father's farm and it was taught by a missionary. The school term was for a period of three months each year. The Reverend attended this school for seven years.