Thirty Years a Slave

Thirty Years a Slave PDF Author: Louis Hughes
Publisher: NewSouth Books
ISBN: 1603060782
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Louis Hughes was born a slave in Virginia and at age 12 was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. After a few interim owners, he was sold to a wealthy slaveowner who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi. Hughes lived there as a house servant until near the end of the Civil War, when he escaped to the Union lines and then, in a daring adventure with the paid help of two Union soldiers, returned to the plantation for his wife. The couple made their way to Canada and after the war to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator. Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published this memoir in 1897. It is a compelling account, by turns searing and compassionate about slavery, slaves, and slaveowners. No reader can be unmoved as Hughes tells about his five attempts to escape, about having to stand by helplessly while watching his wife whipped, of the joy of finally meeting again the brother whom he had not seen since they were little children in Virginia. Yet he also writes knowingly about the economics of slavery and the day-to-day business of the plantation, and the glass-house relationships between slaves and masters. Hughes died in Milwaukee in 1913.

Thirty Years a Slave

Thirty Years a Slave PDF Author: Louis Hughes
Publisher: NewSouth Books
ISBN: 1603060782
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Louis Hughes was born a slave in Virginia and at age 12 was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. After a few interim owners, he was sold to a wealthy slaveowner who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi. Hughes lived there as a house servant until near the end of the Civil War, when he escaped to the Union lines and then, in a daring adventure with the paid help of two Union soldiers, returned to the plantation for his wife. The couple made their way to Canada and after the war to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator. Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published this memoir in 1897. It is a compelling account, by turns searing and compassionate about slavery, slaves, and slaveowners. No reader can be unmoved as Hughes tells about his five attempts to escape, about having to stand by helplessly while watching his wife whipped, of the joy of finally meeting again the brother whom he had not seen since they were little children in Virginia. Yet he also writes knowingly about the economics of slavery and the day-to-day business of the plantation, and the glass-house relationships between slaves and masters. Hughes died in Milwaukee in 1913.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes PDF Author: Elizabeth Keckley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195060843
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a salve and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. Through the eyes of this black woman, we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.

30 Years a Watchtower Slave

30 Years a Watchtower Slave PDF Author: William J. Schnell
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441231641
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
At first, the Watchtower Society seemed harmless to William J. Schnell, even valuable as a way to develop his faith in God and pass it on to others. This book is Schnell's fascinating account of his involvement with the cult, which effectively enticed him in the 1920s and continues to lure countless individuals today. Readers will learn, as Schnell did, that the Jehovah's Witness religion he had joined was anything but innocent. For thirty years he was enslaved by one of the most totalitarian religions of our day, and his story of finally becoming free is riveting. Readers will be alerted to the inner machinations, methods, and doctrines of the Watchtower Society, arming them to forewarn others and witness to their Jehovah's Witness friends, relatives, neighbors, and the stranger at the door. With more than 300,000 copies sold, 30 Years a Watchtower Slave is truly one of the classic testimonies of freedom from a powerful cult.

Slave Life in Georgia

Slave Life in Georgia PDF Author: Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description


Contested Bodies

Contested Bodies PDF Author: Sasha Turner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081229405X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children. Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence—Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.

A Slave in the White House

A Slave in the White House PDF Author: Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0230108938
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Chronicles the life of a former slave to James and Dolley Madison, tracing his early years on their plantation, his service in the White House household staff and post-emancipation achievements as a memoirist.

To be a Slave

To be a Slave PDF Author: Julius Lester
Publisher: Dial
ISBN: 9780803723474
Category : Children's books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Paired with historical commentary and powerful paintings, Julius Lester's book presents what it felt like to be a slave in America through the words of black men and women who lived it rather than filtering through the eyes of others.

The Story of Archer Alexander from Slavery to Freedom, March 30, 1863

The Story of Archer Alexander from Slavery to Freedom, March 30, 1863 PDF Author: William Greenleaf Eliot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fugitive slaves
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description


When I Was a Slave

When I Was a Slave PDF Author: Norman R. Yetman
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486111393
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
DIVMore than 2,000 former slaves provide first-person accounts in blunt, simple language about their lives in bondage. Illuminating, often startling information about southern life before, during, and after the Civil War. /div

Fifty Years in Chains

Fifty Years in Chains PDF Author: Charles Ball
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Slavery
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Fifty Years in Chains: Or, the Life of an American Slave (1859) was an abridged and unauthorized reprint of the earlier Slavery in the United States (1836). In the narratives, Ball describes his experiences as a slave, including the uncertainty of slave life and the ways in which the slaves are forced to suffer inhumane conditions. He recounts the qualities of his various masters and the ways in which his fortune depended on their temperament. As slave narrative scholar William L. Andrews has noted, Ball's oft-repeated narrative directly influenced the manner and matter of later fugitive slave.