Dr. Seth Rogers to his daughter Dolly, February 13, 1863

February 13, 1863.

Tonight I have been talking with Cato Waring, one of my old nurses in the hospital. The attempt to give a report of his history seems futile. He is a quiet old black man, this Cato, with singular combination of intellect and ready shrewdness, a subtlety of character that makes you feel as if a serpent might silently coil around you at any moment, without the rustle of a leaf. He appears dull and heavy, but is full of unspent sharpness and agility. He is old, but not gray, body and spirit alike intact. The night after our return from our expedition, I was telling them in the hospital about it and old Cato sat, with his dull eyes bent upon the fire, seemingly indifferent to all, till I came to the death of the rebel officer in the woods. Then his eyes sparkled and glared at me. “Did you know his name?" “No." “Oh, I hope to God it was my young master who went down that way.”

Tonight Cato came to my tent and began very quietly to tell me of his life in slavery and his escape from it, but it was not long before his tone and manner became too dramatic for me to take notes, and I felt as if all the horrors of the accursed system were being poured upon my naked nerves. His voice was always low, but commanding. He was born on the Santee river and “raised by Mas’r Cooper as a pet.” But he was sent away to learn the carpenter's trade, and after seven years apprenticeship returned home to find his old master was dead and the estate involved by mismanagement on the part of the widow and children. Finally, he and the other slaves were sold to pay the debts. Dr. Waring, his new master, was a bad man, but not so bad as his wife.” The Dr.'s family increased rapidly and his expenses were so great that Cato was made not only driver, but overseer of the estate, a position he held till his escape, a period of sixteen years. Dr. Waring and his wife ranked among the affectionate specimens of humanity. “Dey ollus kiss wen he go out an wen he come in.” Mrs. Waring was a neat housewife and made her servants “clean all de brasses an eberyting befo' daylight in de mo’nin.” When she arose in the morning and examined the furniture with her white handkerchief for dust, there were usually one or two victims selected for the lash. It was Cato's business to wait at the door for orders to apply from one hundred to five hundred lashes every morning before going out to the plantation. If the victim was male, he was stripped and cords were fastened to his fingers and then drawn over a horizontal pole above his head, till his toes only, touched the ground; then the master would stand behind Cato with a paddle and knock him over for any delinquency on his part. The same treatment was applied to women, except that instead of stripping off the clothing, the skirts and chemise were drawn up over the head. When the parlor was filled with visitors, the mistress would wind a towel around the end of a stick and have it thrust into the throat of the victim and it would come out all covered with blood thus the screams of the tortured would be smothered. These statements would seem exaggerated to me if I had not, over and over, in my medical examinations in this regiment, found enormous horizontal scars around the body, and, on inquiry, been told “Dat's what my ole Marsa had me whipped.” Never once have these revelations come to me except by inquiry.

Finally, the war began. Old Cato heard the guns of Fort Sumter and waited and waited to hear his master speak of it. He and all his fellow slaves felt that the hour of deliverance had come. Finally, he said one night to his old master, — young Doctor who “had been off to some place dey calls Paris,” and who was worse than the old man; “What all dat tunder mean way off dar?” “Oh, it's the d—d Yankees who want to steal all our property.” Of course Cato was indignant at the Yankees and promised to stand by his master. Time went ou and the rebels began to doubt their success and at the same time began to swear that they would “work de niggers to deať [death] before the d—d Yankees should have them.” Cato was compelled to exact tasks of the slaves that were before unheard of. He could not do it, and told his master so one Sunday night. The Doctor swore vehemently and ordered Cato to report himself in the morning for chastisement. Cato said “I tanked him berry much for de information an’ went to my hut an’ hung all de keys whar de ole woman could fin’ ’em, but didn’t tell her what I'se gwine to do, cause she’d make such a hullaboo about it.” But “Sunday mornin' befo' de hen git up,” Cato was in a dugout pushing his way through the rice swamp, so that the dogs could not follow his trail. He had gone far before daylight, and, during the day, lay quietly in his boat. Finally he lost his way and had to leave the swamp and his boat, for he had been three days without eating. When he unexpectedly met a white lady, he assumed nonchalance, touched his hat and said, “howdye,” and told such a plausible story that he got something to eat. At another time he went four days without eating and in the evening saw a black man nailing up a coon-skin by torchlight on the side of a hut. “Dis big ole man look like a religion feller,” and Cato was almost on the point of trusting him enough to go up and ask for food, but finally thought it safer to wait a little and try to steal something. He had just entered the yard when a great dog caught him by the chest, but, fortunately, got only his clothing in his mouth. His hickory cane silenced that dog, but others came, the dogs. “an’ all de blacks an’ whites came down togedder.” He ran to the woods and found a pond and waded half the night to escape “I didn't git nullin for eat, but I wasn't hungry no mo' that night.”

At last he found shelter and food and rest under the roof of a negro whom he could trust. He was then twenty-two miles from the river and in the night a black horseman came and said a Yankee gunboat was “comin' up de ribber, an’de Cap'n was holdin' out his arms an’ beck’nin’de niggahs fus' from one sho' an' den from de odder.” Cato straightway started toward the river, but there were many roads. The horseman agreed to break off pine boughs and drop one in the right path at the parting of the ways. All during the dark night Cato would get on his hands and knees to find the boughs at such partings and then go on rejoicing. By some mistake he did not reach the river at the point designated, and afterwards learned that his mistake had saved him from a trap of the rebels for whom the black horseman was acting.

Another night he was lying under a garden fence when a rebel was leaning over it, watching, intently, the house beyond, ready to shoot him when he should jump from a window. “My heart did beat so hard I wondered he didn't hear it, but he didn't an’ wen dey come to sarch de garden, I crawl on my belly till I jump troo de gate an’ it rain so fass I knowed deyre guns wouldn't go wen dey snapped em at me.” At last after wandering about “from de secon’ week in May till de las' week in June I reach de gunboat.” His approach to the boat was full of apprehension. Before he could be certain of the boat, he saw soldiers on the shore and did not quite know whether they were Yankees or rebels. So he wavered between holding up his “white rag” and keeping out of sight. At last they saw him in his little boat, which he had somewhere confiscated, and “I hol' up de rag an' de mo' de boat come, de mo' I draw back, but oh, wen I git on de boat I thought I was in hebben.”

I shall not trouble you with more slave stories. It is too much like trying to relate a tragedy acted by Rachel — very tame.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 43, October, 1909—June, 1910: February 1910. p. 362-4

Diary of Laura M. Towne: Monday, April 28, 1862

It is very touching to hear the negroes begging Mr. Pierce to let them plant and tend corn and not cotton. They do not see the use of cotton, but they know that their corn has kept them from starvation, and they are anxious about next year's crop. Mr. Pierce takes us to the different plantations as often as he can to talk to the negroes and make them contented, which they are not now by any means. The sight of ladies gives them a feeling of security that nothing else does.

Mr. Ruggles is a fine man, quiet, good, and easy. His men are contented. I went with him after church yesterday to his plantation to visit his sick, carrying my whole doctor's apparatus. It was my first purely professional visit out here.

Yesterday we attended the Baptist church, deep in the live-oaks with their hanging moss. It was a most picturesque sight to see the mules tied in the woods and the oddly dressed negroes crowding in. Inside it was stranger still, the turbans or bare heads, the jetty faces, and uncouth forms were all wild. We first had a Sunday School where the letters were taught principally, and then the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer read. Mr. Horton made an excellent sermon upon the text, “Hold fast to that liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free,” or something like that. He told them that liberty did not mean freedom to be idle, etc. But the sermon was an exhortation to preserve liberty, and was a good one. . . .

I saw at church, and on Mr. Gabriel Caper's plantation, a woman brought from Africa whose face was tattooed. She appeared to be of more vigorous stock than our own negroes. I find most of the negroes I have seen very weak and decidedly unhealthy and having bad teeth. What else could be expected on hominy and pork from generation to generation, and with such houses and such work?

Last night I was at the “Praise House” for a little time and saw Miss Nelly reading to the good women. Afterwards we went to the “shout,” a savage, heathenish dance out in Rina's house. Three men stood and sang, clapping and gesticulating. The others shuffled along on their heels, following one another in a circle and occasionally bending the knees in a kind of curtsey. They began slowly, a few going around and more gradually joining in, the song getting faster and faster, till at last only the most marked part of the refrain is sung and the shuffling, stamping, and clapping get furious. The floor shook so that it seemed dangerous. It swayed regularly to the time of the song. As they danced they, of course, got out of breath, and the singing was kept up principally by the three apart, but it was astonishing how long they continued and how soon after a rest they were ready to begin again. Miss Walker and I, Mrs. Whiting and her husband were there — a little white crowd at the door looking at this wild firelight scene; for there was no other light than that from the fire, which they kept replenishing. They kept up the “shout” till very late.

The negroes are pretty cunning. They pretend they want us to stay, that they would be in despair if we went away, and they tell us they will give us eggs and chickens. Indeed, they do constantly offer eggs and they feel hurt if they are refused, for that is equivalent to refusing to make any returns. Old Susannah, the cook, often sends to the table fish or other delicacies. When I ask her where she got them, she says a friend gave them to her and she gives them to us. She doesn't want pay — no, indeed. She always gave such things to her old “massas,” and then they in return gave a little sweetening or something good from the house. It was give and take, good feeling all around. All giving on one side, I should think; all taking, nearly, on the other; and good feeling according to the nature of the class, one only content in grasping, the other in giving. They transfer their gratitude to “Government.” One woman said to me, “I was servant-born, ma'am, and now 'cause de Gov'ment fightin' for me, I'll work for Gov'ment, dat I will, and welcome.” Another woman, to-day, just from “the main,” said to me that she had hard work to escape, sleeping in “de ma'sh” and hiding all day. She brought away her two little children, and said her master had just “licked” her eldest son almost to death because he was suspected of wanting to join the Yankees. “They does it to spite us, ma'am, ’cause you come here. Dey spites us now ’cause de Yankees come.” She was grateful to the Yankees for coming, nevertheless, but deplored that the season for planting cotton was over, because only the cotton-workers were to be paid and she was suffering for clothes. Another man said, “I craves work, ma'am, if I gets a little pay, but if we don't gets pay, we don't care — don't care to work.” Natural enough. One very handsome, tall, proud-looking woman came here to buy, but Miss Walker was too busy to sell. I told her she could have no clothes; when she and another woman, thinking I supposed them beggars, said — “We not dat kind, ma'am; we got our money here.” They object to going to the young gentlemen on the places for clothes, thinking it will be taken as a kind of advance for notice — such notice as the best of them have probably dreaded, but which the worst have sought. Women should be here — good elderly women. Miss Donelson was an irreparable loss. The men and women living together on this place are not all of them married. When Miss Walker asks them they say, “No, not married, ma'am, but I just tuck (took) her and brought her home.” They make not the slightest preparation for an expected infant, having always been used to thinking it “massa's” concern whether it was kept alive or not. The woman we saw yesterday, whose baby was dead, seemed perfectly stolid, and when I gave her a dollar was pleased as if she had no sorrow. Yet I think the negroes are not harsh to the children. They have a rough way of ordering them that sounds savage. When you speak to a child who does not answer, the others say, “Talk, talk. Why you not talk?” — in the most ordersome tone to the silent one.

In church on Sunday after service Mr. Horton came to me and said he was glad to see me there. I answered that I was much gratified by his sermon, but objected to two things — his qualifying their freedom rather too much, and his telling them that we had all come down to do them good, leaving homes and comfort for their sake. “I wanted to keep up their respect for these young men,” he answered. “I don't know that we shall do it by self-praise,” I said — and he looked annoyed. “I have heard them told so, so often,” I said again, “that I am sure that is well drilled into their heads.” One thing the soldiers did, notwithstanding all their wronging of the slaves by taking their corn, and that is, they made them fully sure that they are free and that they never again can be claimed by any master as property. Some of the superintendents threaten that they shall be reenslaved if they do not succeed and work as freemen. But I think the negroes know that it is only a threat, and despise the makers of it.

Mr. Hooper heard last night, from a special agent who was sent down here to convince the soldiers that Government is right in reserving their pay for their wives, that it is said at the North that the goods are sold here on private speculation, and that the money is put into the pockets of the superintendents. Also that the whole plan is a failure and is sure to break up. I think the latter very probable, for my part, for few can be found fitted for carrying out such purely benevolent plans as this was designed to be.

The negro men and women come crowding here at all hours, begging to be allowed to buy clothing, and, although they stand for hours in the hall, we have never missed the slightest thing.

Mr. Pierce begins now to pay a dollar an acre on account, which the negroes find it hard to comprehend and are not well content with. We women have to be borrowed and driven to the different plantations to talk to and appease the eager anxiety. This is quite a triumph, after having been rejected as useless.

On Sunday I was much pleased with one of the hymns the negroes spontaneously set up, of which the refrain was —

"No man can hinder me."

It was, I believe, saying that nothing could prevent access to Jesus. I heard them introduce the names of several men, as they do in improvising, but their pronunciation was so very imperfect that I could not hear fully. The men sing mostly, and have much finer voices than the women.

Another song is, “The Bell done ring.” Another, “Bound to go.” Another, “Come to Jesus.”

They sing the tune of “John Brown's Body” to other words, and in church or out of it, whenever they begin one of these songs, they keep time with their feet and bodies. It sounded very strange in the church.

Susannah has just been up here telling me about the flight of the rebels. She says that the day after the “Guns at Baypoint” (which is what all the negroes call the taking of Port Royal), her master went away, taking his family. He wanted Susannah to go with him, she being the seamstress of the family, but she refused. He then told her that if she stayed she would either be killed by the Yankees or sold to Cuba; but she said, why should they kill poor black folks who did no harm and could only be guided by white folks? After he went, his son came back once and told the negroes that they must burn the cotton; but they said, “Why for we burn de cotton? Where we get money then for buy clo’ and shoe and salt?” So, instead of burning it, they guarded it every night, the women keeping watch and the men ready to defend it when the watchers gave the alarm. Some of the masters came back to persuade their negroes to go with them, and when they would not, they were shot down. One man told me he had known of thirty being shot. This man is a cabinet-maker and schoolmaster among them, and says he reads all the papers. He is named Will Capers. He is very intelligent and self-respecting. He is in hopes he will be paid for teaching. While his master was here he had a secret night-school for men. He was very discontented because he was ordered to the field, there being no work at his trade to do. When Mr. Pierce harangued them from the porch, this Will said he did not think it right to have to go to the field. Mr. Pierce said, “What would you do? There is no cabinetwork for you, and every man must work. You want to be a soldier, I suppose, don't you?” “Yes, sah,” promptly. Then Mr. Pierce made two of them stand up and he drilled them a little. The other day Miss W. and I, sitting in the carriage, found this man standing by it. I said, “I remember your face, but I do not know where I have seen you.” “One of the soldiers, ma'am,” he answered quietly. So this man, an intelligent, reliable negro, who has gone sensibly to the field ever since Mr. Pierce's explanation, affirms that he knew of thirty men being shot down by their masters, and says the masters declared they would shoot down everyone they saw who remained. Nevertheless, a great part of them stayed; and many of those who went came back, or are coming every day. Others from the mainland come here daily for clothes and have pitiful tales to tell of how their masters whip those they suspect of wishing to join the Yankees. Susannah's master has never come back. He is probably afraid of his negroes, as he was a very cruel, hard master, who gave no shoes, salt, molasses, or Sunday clothes — neither would he allow the field hands any meat, nor permit them to raise pigs. Susannah once raised some pigs and her master threatened to shoot them. “No, massa, you cawnt do it. What can I do for our children's winter shoes and our salt if our pigs are shot? You cawnt do it — you cawnt do it.” He told her not to be impudent. “I don't mean impudence, massa, but you cawnt shoot my hogs”; and he couldn't. He used to buy and sell as suited him. Susannah's three boys (all she raised out of twenty-two that she had) were sent away from her, but when she had the fever from going in the sun to see the little one, and crawled out to beg her master to let her have one to hand her a drink of water in the night, he consented. He brought one from his son's plantation, where he had sent him, but told her that as soon as she was well she must part with him again. He also whipped, or “licked,” as they say, terribly. For the last year he was determined to make them work as mulch as they possibly could, because “he was afraid the Yankees were coming”; and so he kept them in the fields from morning till night and lashed them every day. Susannah herself never had a whipping after she was a child. Her mistress used to tell her she would “lash her,” and scolded her, but Susannah used to say “Whippin' never does me no good, ma'am. I’ll explain and I’ll do better next time. I only wants to know what you want and I’ll do it. If my pride and principle won't make me do right, lashing won't.” She spoke continually of doing things from pride and principle. She was sickly, and she made all the ladies' dresses — two reasons for her being spared. “I never axed no wagers,but my two clothes for the year. I was quite satisfy if dey didn't lick me. I would work or do anything for them if dey would n't lick me.” Her young “misuses” cried when they went away, and said “Oh, Zannah, the Yankees’ll kill you. If you see a Yankee it'll drive you crazy.” “Why, miss, ain't dey natural folks?” “Oh, no, Zannah, they don't look like us.” So, when Susannah saw soldiers coming, she ran out to Marcus, her husband, and said, “Oh, deys soldiers, deys come to kill us,” and her hands shook with trembling. But Marcus said they wouldn't hurt her and ordered her to go to them to see what they wanted. When they saw her fright, they said to her, “We are not going to hurt you. We only want you to get us something to eat, and we’ll pay you for it.” “Oh, such pretty men!” she said, “and so respectful.” They stayed some time; and Susannah used to parch peanuts for them every night. All of the negroes speak with tenderness and gratitude of our soldiers. Susannah says, when feeling grateful, “Oh, you from the Norf are all so patient. Such a patient people — never see notion' like it.’

We need patience. One day I came downstairs to make a cup of tea for an unexpected guest. No fire and no wood. No possibility of getting wood, as it was raining hard. No butter. Old Robert was sick and had the key of the dairy, and was away off somewhere; just as it was at breakfast-time, when we had no milk, and Robert was away at “the pen,” too far for return before we had done breakfast. I sent Lucy through the rain for Robert, who came after a time with the butter — and no bread, rations overdrawn and consumed, none to come till tomorrow. Hominy gone. Sent Lucy to ask Susannah why and where she had taken it. It came. Robert offered to lend us a little wood — so at last we got a fire (and a cup of tea with some hominy and butter).

I told Rina to come up and do our room and have not seen her since. Just now Aleck was idle and I sent him for wood to the pines with a little mule. I told him not to whip it. He yelled and doubled himself up with laughing, and lashed it before my eyes until quite out of sight, shrieking with laughter and paying no heed to my calls.

Rupert Sargent Holland, Editor, Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne: Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina 1862-1864, p. 21-30

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 6, 1861

My chattel Joe, “adscriptus mihi domino” awoke me to a bath of Mississippi water with huge lumps of ice in it, to which he recommended a mint-julep as an adjunct. It was not here that I was first exposed to an ordeal of mint-julep, for in the early morning a stranger in a Southern planter's house may expect the offer of a glassful of brandy, sugar, and peppermint beneath an island of ice — an obligatory panacea for all the evils of climate. After it has been disposed of, Pompey may come up again with glass number two: “Massa say fever very bad this morning —much dew.” It is possible that the degenerate Anglo-Saxon stomach has not the fine tone and temper of that of an Hibernian friend of mine, who considered the finest thing to counteract the effects of a little excess was a tumbler of hot whiskey and water the moment the sufferer opened his eyes in the morning. Therefore, the kindly offering may be rejected. But on one occasion before breakfast the negro brought up mint-julep number three, the acceptance of which he enforced by the emphatic declaration, “Massa says, sir, you had better take this, because it'll be the last he make before breakfast.”

Breakfast is served: there is on the table a profusion of dishes — grilled fowl, prawns, eggs and ham, fish from New Orleans, potted salmon from England, preserved meats from France, claret, iced water, coffee and tea, varieties of hominy, mush, and African vegetable preparations. Then come the newspapers, which are perused eagerly with ejaculations, “Do you hear what they are doing now — infernal villains! that Lincoln must be mad!” and the like. At one o'clock, in spite of the sun, I rode out with Mr. Lee, along the road by the Mississippi, to Mr. Burnside's plantation, called Orange Grove, from a few trees which still remain in front of the overseer's house. We visited an old negro, called “Boatswain,” who lives with his old wife in a wooden hut close by the margin of the Mississippi. His business is to go to Donaldsonville for letters, or meat, or ice for the house — a tough row for the withered old man. He is an African born, and he just remembers being carried on board ship and taken to some big city before he came upon the plantation.

“Do you remember nothing of the country you came from, Boatswain?” “Yes, sir. Jist remember trees and sweet things my mother gave me, and much hot sand I put my feet in, and big leaves that we play with — all us little children — and plenty to eat, and big birds and shells.” “Would you like to go back, Boatswain?” “What for, sir? no one know old Boatswain there. My old missus Sally inside.” “Are you quite happy, Boatswain?” “I'm getting very old, massa. Massa Burnside very good to Boatswain, but who care for such dam old nigger? Golla Mighty gave me fourteen children, but he took them all away again from Sally and me. No budy care much for dam old nigger like me.”

Further on Mr. Seal salutes us from the veranda of his house, but we are bound for overseer Gibbs, who meets us, mounted, by the roadside — a man grim in beard and eye, and silent withal, with a big whip in his hand and a large knife stuck in his belt. He leads us through a magnificent area of cane and maize, the latter towering far above our heads; but I was most anxious to see the forest primeval which borders the clear land at the back of the estate, and spreads away over alligator-haunted swamps into distant bayous. It was not, however, possible to gratify one's Curiosity very extensively beyond the borders of the cleared land, for rising round the roots of the cypress, swamp-pine, and live-oak, there was a barrier of undergrowth and bush twined round the cane-brake which stands some sixteen feet high, so stiff that the united force of man and horse could not make way against the rigid fibres; and indeed, as Mr. Gibbs told us, “When the niggers take to the cane-brake they can beat man or dog, and nothing beats them but snakes and starvation.”

He pointed out some sheds around which were broken bottles where the last Irish gang had been working, under one “John Loghlin,” of Donaldsonville, a great contractor, who, he says, made plenty of money out of his countrymen, whose bones are lying up and down the Mississippi. “They duer work like fire,” he said. “Loghlin does not give them half the rations we give our negroes, but he can always manage them with whiskey; and when he wants them to do a job he gives them plenty of ‘forty-rod,’ and they have their fight out — reglar free fight, I can tell you, while it lasts. Next morning they will sign anything and go anywhere with him.”

On the Orange Grove Plantation, although the crops were so fine, the negroes unquestionably seemed less comfortable than those in the quarters of Houmas, separated from them by a mere nominal division. Then, again, there were more children with fair complexions to be seen peeping out of the huts; some of these were attributed to the former overseer, one Johnson by name, but Mr. Gibbs, as if to vindicate his memory, told me confidentially he had paid a large sum of money to the former proprietor of the estate for one of his children, and had carried it away with him when he left. “You could not expect him, you know,” said Gibbs, “to buy them all at the prices that were then going in ’56. All the children on the estate,” added he, “are healthy, and I can show my lot against Seal's over there, though I hear tell he had a great show of them out to you yesterday.”

The bank of the river below the large plantation was occupied by a set of small Creole planters, whose poor houses were close together, indicating very limited farms, which had been subdivided from time to time, according to the French fashion; so that the owners have at last approached pauperism; but they are tenacious of their rights, and will not yield to the tempting price offered by the large planters. They cling to the soil without enterprise and without care. The Spanish settlers along the river are open to the same reproach, and prefer their own ease to the extension of their race in other lands, or to the aggrandizement of their posterity; and an Epicurean would aver, they were truer philosophers than the restless creatures who wear out their lives in toil and labor to found empires for the future.

It is among these men that, at times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that the negroes are exposed to the severest labor; but it is also true that the slaves have closer relations with the families of their owners, and live in more intimate connection with them than they do under the strict police of the large plantations. These people sometimes get forty bushels of corn to the acre, and a hogshead and a half of sugar. We saw their children going to school, whilst the heads of the houses sat in the veranda smoking, and their mothers were busy with household duties; and the signs of life, the voices of women and children, and the activity visible on the little farms, contrasted not unpleasantly with the desert-like stillness of the larger settlements. Rode back in a thunder-storm.

At dinner in the evening Mr. Burnside entertained a number of planters in the neighborhood, — M. Bringier, M. Coulon (French Creoles), Mr. Duncan Kenner, a medical gentleman named Cotmann,. and others; the last - named gentleman is an Unionist, and does not hesitate to defend his opinions; but he has, during a visit to Russia, formed high ideas of the necessity and virtues of an absolute and centralized government.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 276-9

In The Review Queue: Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, Annotated Edition

Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave:

Annotated Edition

Edited by  Hank Trent

The American Anti-Slavery Society originally published Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave in 1838 to much fanfare, describing it as a rare slave autobiography. Soon thereafter, however, southerners challenged the authenticity of the work and the society retracted it. Abolitionists at the time were unable to defend the book; and, until now, historians could not verify Williams’s identity or find the Alabama slave owners he named in the book. As a result, most scholars characterized the author as a fraud, perhaps never even a slave, or at least not under the circumstances described in the book.

In this annotated edition of Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave Hank Trent provides newly discovered biographical information about the true author of the book—an African American man enslaved in Alabama and Virginia. Trent identifies Williams’s owners in those states as well as in Maryland and Louisiana. He explains how Williams escaped from slavery and then altered his life story to throw investigators off his track. Through meticulous and extensive research, Trent also reveals unknown details of James Williams’s real life, drawing upon runaway ads, court cases, census records, and estate inventories never before linked to him or to the narrative. In the end, Trent proves that the author of the book was truly an enslaved man, albeit one who wrote a romanticized, fictionalized story based on his real life, which proved even more complex and remarkable than the story he told.

About the Author

Hank Trent is an independent scholar focusing on antebellum American history. He resides in Ohio and is currently working on a biography of Richmond slave trader Bacon Tait.

ISBN 978-0807151020, LSU Press, © 2013, Hardcover, 190 Pages, Chapter End Notes, Appendices & Index. $40.50.  To Purchase the book click HERE.