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Slave Narrative
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
Slave Narrative
In District #5, Lawrence County, Bedford, Indiana lived two ex-slaves named Thomas Ash and Mrs. Mary Crane. Mr. Thomas Ash was born in the year 1856 and was raised on a farm of Charles Ash, in Anderson County. He has an unpleasant memory of some slaves being tied up to a pole and getting whipped for disobeying orders. However, for himself, he never had such an experience or was whipped. After Lincoln's proclamation, many nigros left to join the Union army as he was making them free men (Schwartz, pp. 602). Mrs. Mary Crane, on the other hand, was born on the farm of Wattie Williams in the year 1855. Her parents were owned by the farm owner, and he then gave her father to his daughter as a wedding present but was later sold at auctioned when her husband was broke. Instead of getting sold down at the river, his grandfather asked his owner to buy her father, and so he did. They then grew up on that farm where they were not treated as awful, but the neighbor who lived nearby treated his slaves the worst way (Anderson, pp. 30).
What I found surprising after hearing the ex-slaves stories was that none of the two slaves faced any harsh punishments, but they seem to have shared the awful things they witnessed during their childhood (Cade, pp. 330). What I have read about slavery back in the late eighties was that every slave owner was a monster. After hearing their side of the story and their lives as slaves, I found it quite fascinating to learn that the Lincoln proclamation made it possible for all slave negroes to be free after all. Even though, most of them at the time did not even know what freedom meant.
References
Anderson, David. "Telling Stories, Making Selves: Nostalgia, the Lost Cause, and Postbellum Plantation Memoirs and Reminiscences." Civil War and Narrative. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 21-38.
Cade, John B. "Out of the mouths of ex-slaves." The Journal of Negro History 20.3 (1935): 294-337.
Schwartz, Barry. "The Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln’s Many Second Thoughts." Society 52.6 (2015): 590-603.
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