David W. Blight, University David W. Blight:Ein Sklave nicht mehr: Zwei Männer, die in die Freiheit flohen, einschließlich ihrer eigenen Erzählungen
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David W. Blight magnifies the drama and significance by prefacing the narratives with each man's life history. As if their own stories of slavery and the flight to freedom were not fascin… Más…
David W. Blight magnifies the drama and significance by prefacing the narratives with each man's life history. As if their own stories of slavery and the flight to freedom were not fascinating enough, Blight has filled in the details of their lives after slavery in a way that re-creates both the turbulence and nearly unfathomable joy of emancipation. The Nile on eBay FREE SHIPPING UK WIDE A Slave No More by David W. Blight, University David W. Blight Slave narratives, some of the most powerful records of the past, are extremely rare, with only 55 post-Civil War narratives surviving. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group. FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description Slave narratives, some of the most powerful records of our past, are extremely rare, with only fifty-five post-Civil War narratives surviving. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group with the publication of A Slave No More, a major new addition to the canon of American history. Handed down through family and friends, these narratives tell gripping stories of escape: Through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, the men reached the protection of the occupying Union troops. David W. Blight magnifies the drama and significance by prefacing the narratives with each man's life history. Using a wealth of genealogical information, Blight has reconstructed their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their climb to black working-class stability in the north, where they reunited their families.In the stories of Turnage and Washington, we find history at its most intimate, portals that offer a rich new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom. In A Slave No More, the untold stories of two ordinary men take their place at the heart of the American experience. Author Biography DAVID W. BLIGHT is the director of Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and a professor of American history. His books include Race and Reunion, which won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Table of Contents Contents Prologue 1 Chapter 1 The Rappahannock River 17 Chapter 2 Mobile Bay 55 Chapter 3 Unusual Evidence 90 Chapter 4 The Logic and the Trump of Jubilee 128 Author's Note 163 John M. Washington, "Memorys of the Past" 165 Wallace Turnage, "Journal of Wallace Turnage" 213 Appendix: John Washington, "The Death of Our Little Johnnie" 259 Acknowledgments 261 Notes 265 Index 301 Review PRAISE FOR ROWING TO FREEDOM "Rowing to Freedom is a remarkable and rare volume. We are fortunate that David Blight, a foremost authority on the slave narrative, has applied his considerable skills as historian and detective to these extraordinary stories of 'ordinary' men. As if their own stories of slavery and the flight to freedom were not fascinating enough, Blight has filled in the details of their lives after slavery in a way that re-creates both the turbulence and nearly unfathomable joy of emancipation. The narratives of Turnage and Washington will surely take their place among the most moving and instructive examples of the genre." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Together, Blight's meticulous research and the previously unknown autobiographical writings of these two men bring to life with unprecedented power the human dimensions of slavery and emancipation." --Eric Foner "Rowing to Freedom presents two of the most significant finds in the entire genre of slave narratives and of the primary material from the Civil War." --David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 "David Blight combines the authority of a great historian with the humanistic zeal of a novelist . . . Rowing to Freedom is a compelling account of two men of remarkable courage who, by writing down their stories, sought to make themselves visible. Neither man could have wished for a more sympathetic or knowledgeable interpreter than David Blight." --Caryl Phillips, author of A Distant Shore -- Review Quote "Two remarkable lives, previously lost, emerge with startling clarity, largely through the words of the principal actors themselves...Washington and Turnage...offer a precious commodity." Excerpt from Book Chapter One The Rappahannock River Day after day the slaves came into camps and everywhere the "Stars and Stripes" waved they seemed to know freedom had dawned to the slave. --John Washington, 1873, remembering August 1862 John M. Washington was born a slave on May 20, 1838, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Washington begins his narrative with the wry comment that he "never had the pleasure of knowing" his mother''s owner, Thomas R. Ware, Sr., who died before John was born. And he supposes "It might have been a doubtful pleasure." So far as can be determined, Washington also never knew his father, though we can assume he was white. As an autobiographer reconstructing his own youthful identity, Washington says revealingly: "I see myself a small light haired boy (very often passing easily for a white boy)."1 With these words Washington recollects the complicated story of so many American slaves--mixed racial heritage. The offspring of sexual unions between black women and their white male owners or pursuers suffered a legacy of confusion, shame, and abuse, but they also occasionally benefited from economic and social advantages, especially in towns and cities. Washington was one of more than 400,000 out of four million American slaves by 1860 who were officially categorized as "mulatto" or other terminology to distinguish a person of some white parentage. From 1830 to the Civil War, the state of Virginia especially had gone to great effort, although unsuccessfully in practical terms, to legally establish a color line marking who was white and who was not.2 White friends, and perhaps relatives, aided John''s education and opportunities early in his life. But in Fredericksburg and elsewhere, due to his mother''s status and color, he was considered a chattel slave until the war came. Exactly who Washington''s father was, and how John got his middle initial and last name, have been impossible to trace. A John M. Washington, a distant cousin of President George Washington, lived in Fredericksburg, went to West Point in the 1810s, became an artillery officer, and died in a shipwreck in 1853. But no evidence exists for his patrimony of John. Ware had four sons by 1838, ages twenty-six, twenty-four, twenty, and eighteen. Any of them could have been Washington''s father, although only the two younger ones, John and William, seem to have been residents of Fredericksburg at the time.3 Washington''s story is much clearer on his mother''s side. Women determined, protected, and supported John''s life chances. His maternal grandmother was a slave named Molly who was born in the late 1790s and owned by Thomas Ware. Molly, called "my Negro woman," is acknowledged for her "faithful service" in Ware''s 1820 will, in which he bequeathed her and her children (valued at $600) to his wife, Catherine (who would eventually be John''s owner). By 1825 Ware''s estate inventory lists Molly and four children; John''s mother, Sarah, was the oldest at age eight. Molly would have another four children by the 1830s. In June of 1829 this strong-willed mother misbehaved (perhaps running away) in such a manner that Catherine Ware arranged with a punishment house to execute a "warrant against Molly and for whipping her by contract $1.34."4 Perhaps Molly''s defiance was sparked because her sister, Alice, had just been sold away for $350. We can only imagine the sorrow and scars in Molly''s psyche, a woman whose life was spent nursing white children as well as her own and serving the extended Ware family. But she would live to join her grandson on their flight to freedom in 1862. She died a free woman near her daughter, grandson, and great grandchildren. Whether she departed as a sad or a joyful matriarch, John Washington does not tell us. His silence about Molly may reflect that he was telling only his own heroic story, which did not allow for his grandmother''s saga, but it could also represent a part of his family history he was not prepared to expose. Sarah Tucker, John''s mother, was likely born in January 1817. Who the men fathering all these children were remains a researcher''s mystery. Sarah probably also had a white father; she is described in various documents as being "bright mulatto" and short in height.5 Ware did not own any men who could have been either Sarah''s or John''s father. When Sarah gave birth to John in 1838, she was a twenty-one-year-old who had somehow learned to read and write, a less unusual accomplishment for urban slaves in small households than for plantation slaves. In 1832, when Sarah was a teenager, Catherine Ware married Francis Whitaker Taliaferro, a plantation and slave owner with four grown children. The Taliaferros had their own slaves and hired others when they needed extra hands, as was the common practice; in 1836 Mr. Taliaferro advertised for "ten able-bodied men for the remainder of the year," offering twelve dollars per month to their owners. The Taliaferros also hired out the, [PU: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich]<
