Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Purchase Benefits
What is included with this book?
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
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.
Copyright © 2007 by David W. Blight
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.