In the summer of 1864, fourteen-year-old Jacob Stroyer was sent to work in Fort Sum-ter. He did not go willingly. Stroyer was a slave owned by the wealthy Mrs. Matthew R. Singleton and was sent from the large Kensington plantation outside Columbia, SC to labor for the Confederate cause. Th e Confederate Corps of Engineers called upon slave owners to contribute their enslaved people’s labor to the problem of construction and fortification of roads, bridges, and key defensive sites. Stroyer explained that fifteen slaves from his plantation “were sent to work on fortifications each year during the war.”2