Without listening to the words of enslaved people, historians could not study slavery from their point of view. Baltimore, The Norman, Remington Co., 1920. Gathers twenty of the most significant slave narratives published since the Civil War Notes on the Civil War Era - A. Although exact numbers are not available, nearly one hundred slave narratives were published as books or pamphlets between 1760 and 1865, and approximately another one hundred following the Civil War. 1, series 1. Lengthier research, hopefully, would be able to uncover his or her identity. By an English Combatant, Lieutenant of Artillery on the Field Staff. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published in January 1861. The only happy folk were the slaves, Sherman remarked, the whites were in distress. When his master, Jack Davis, returned from the front lines, Daviss wife asked if he thought the Yankees would win. The new studies stressed the autonomy of slaves communities, the resilience of their families, the vitality of their culture, and the shrewdness of their resistance. By 1941, a collection of more than 2,000 interviews totaling over 10,000 pages had been indexed and deposited at the Library of Congress. Sherman recalled that some were killed by Confederate snipers, who decapitated them and placed their heads upon posts that lined the fields so that they could be seen by other slaves to warn them of what would befall them if they attempted to escape.[28] Wartime freedom was tenuous life and liberty had to be guarded. The sight of the men stragglin in, all sick or shot, deeply affected the girl, who remembered it seventy years later. When I first read this, I wondered if they were free blacks? Narratives by enslaved people became an important form of literary expression before the Civil War when about 65 such memoirs were published as books or pamphlets. The author collected hundreds of narratives from both the Fisk collection and the WPA (mostly the latter) and told about the entire war through the words of the slaves. This is unsurprising. North Carolina Narratives, Vol. Few primary sources did more to stimulate this innovation than the ex-slave interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency, in the 1930s. Image: (Bottom, Left) Georgia Heavy Infantry. His meaning is unclear. Betty discussed her marriage to a Virginia-born man (also unnnamed) and their marriage record is shown below. If you read the eleven pages of Bettys interview, youll see ample example of why this source can be problematic. Major differences between the north and south besides slavery: north was industrial than the south, had more money, more immigrants and more people. Ellen Claibourn was a teenager in Columbia County, Georgia, where her mistress opened a small hospital in her home. Personal narratives from the Civil War are a rich resources for understanding the wide range of experiences and viewpoints of Americans during the war. Next, I began to comb through the WPA's Georgia collection of slave narratives. " Although most of these accounts appeared before the Civil War, more than one-third are the result of the ambitious efforts of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to interview surviving ex-slaves during Whether they acted alone or in groups, fugitive slaves took serious risks when they set out for Union-held territory. The cavalrymen dismounted, the infantrymen stacked arms and built campfires, and they called [to] the slaves, saying, Your [sic] are free. The mood was festive. as we analyze different types of sources. Rawick, George P., ed. 1850-1890 war and its aftermath B. I. N. Johnston, Co. H., Sixth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, From Monocacy to Danville: A Trip with the Confederates, I Rode with Stonewall, Being Chiefly the War Experiences of the Youngest member of Jacksons staff from the John Brown Raid to the Hanging of Mrs. Surratt. Approximately fifty slave narratives were published from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s. Shippensburg, PA : Burd Street Press, c1993. Beauregard, 1880. But even though they accompanied a powerful army, freedpeople still faced Confederate retaliation. The following. The four texts gathered here are all from North Carolina slaves and are among the most memorable and influential slave narratives published in the nineteenth century. For all their disputes, early scholars focused on what masters did to or for their slaves. [5] Around the same time, historians rediscovered the narratives just as they began to reinterpret slavery from the viewpoint of the enslaved. What they keer bout you being white or black? He critiqued the narratives geographic distribution, which did not match the 1860 slave population, leaving states like Arkansas overrepresented and others, like Mississippi, underrepresented. Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States of America, Pg. p. 190. Providence : Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1905. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Bettys interview starts with the WPA author identifying the location and name of Bettys last owner. Yetman, Norman, ed. The following are important analytical questions to consider when looking at these resources: For more information about how to use sources for your research, visit theinterpreting primary and secondary sourcesguide from the University of Maryland Libraries. Introduction to NC Digital History. Studies of African-American history and culture flourished in the 1920s, however, and out of this renaissance the WPA narratives were born. It was also common for enslaved people to marry a spouse who lived on a nearby plantation, and we see that Betty took her fathers surname, even though she was enslaved. Scholars have warned each other for more than forty years to approach the narratives with healthy skepticism, but there is a near-consensus that the hazards of attempting to understand slavery without using them far outweigh the limitations their use poses.[14]. Eventually, most stayed with General Shermans column as it moved northward through the Palmetto State. As instruments meant to turn the Northern public against slavery, slave narratives often employed common tropes. "I was born in Alabama in 1846 and had a hard time all through slavery as my mother was sold away from me. [12] In contrast, the WPA narratives were neither fine-tuned for political effect nor written by exceptional authors. Lawdy! Commonly called the WPA Slave Narratives, this collection of more than 2000 transcripts changed how historians understand antebellum slavery.
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