Interview with David W. Blight,
author of A Slave No More
Until recently, there were only fifty-five post-Civil War slave narratives in existence. So when historian was contacted about the discovery of two unedited narratives—it was a major event. The handwritten journals of John Washington and Wallace Turnage have been lovingly preserved by generations of family and friends, and now they are presented in A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. Blight has reconstructed the lives of these two men and their families, and adds valuable commentary about slave life in the South during the period surrounding the Civil War. A Slave No More is a major new addition to the canon of American history.
Q: In their memoirs, John Washington and Wallace Turnage document their early years and their escapes from slavery but do not include details about their lives as freed men in the North. What resources did you consult to reconstruct their lives and those of their families?
David W. Blight: I used census manuscripts; city directories; birth, marriage, and death certificates; obituaries; city and regional maps; lots of newspapers; pension records; some church records and early histories; writings and reports on infant mortality; and extended visits to Washington, D.C., Fredericksburg, Mobile, Boston, Cohasset, and finally a great variety of photo archives both online and especially at the New York Public Library.
Q: Turnage, who was born into slavery in North Carolina, was often subjected to the physical brutality of “the peculiar institution.” As a result, his journal is much darker in tone than Washington’s. Can this be interpreted as a reflection of one of the differences between rural and city life for slaves prior to emancipation?
DB: Yes it can; and, yes, Turnage’s narrative is a tale of physical brutality in ways Washington’s is not. There were great differences between the lives, chances, and mobility of urban as opposed to plantation slaves. One of the great values of placing these two narratives together in the same book is that they show us two very different kinds of experiences for slaves and two quite different ways that slaves escaped to freedom during the Civil War.
Q: By presenting these two accounts together, does A Slave No More give an accurate representation of what it was like to be black men in the South during the period surrounding the Civil War?
DB: Accuracy is a tricky subject because slaves lived very different lives from one region to another. But yes, these two narratives are remarkable windows into daily slave life, into family formation, into the world of slave labor. We can also see here two stunning expressions of the meaning of home and connectedness in these two stories. Moreover, we can learn a good deal here about how the war itself affected slavery and slaves’ lives in two distinct regions of the South—northern Virginia and cotton belt Alabama and Mississippi.
Q: You must have been surprised when you were contacted about the existence of these two handwritten journals. Do you think it is likely that other authentic emancipation narratives are out there, possibly being preserved in someone’s attic or in “a black clamshell box”?
DB: I was stunned, especially when the second one fell into my lap, and I realized what I had. Yes, there will be more narratives, diaries, and other documents by and about American slaves that will emerge from families, private collections, and even formal archives.
Q: The words of former slaves and free blacks are studied in high schools and colleges throughout the country. Which slave narratives would you include on a required reading list?
DB: The two most important ones are Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In my introduction to A Slave No More I give a brief survey of the scope and character of the genre of slave narratives, both pre- and post-emancipation.
Q: A Slave No More cites a wide variety of sources, including memoirs, novels, and historical texts. What books do you recommend for people who want to read more about the historical, social, and political aspects of this time?
DB: Well, the possible bibliography of slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War is vast. But if I had to choose a handful or so of must-reads they would be: Ira Berlin, et. al., eds., Free At Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War; Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction; David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; William L. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves; and James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics.
