I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives
2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Out of the hundreds of published slave narratives, only a handful exist specific to South Carolina, and most of these are not readily available to modern readers. This collection restores to print seven slave narratives documenting the lived realities of slavery as it existed across the Palmetto State's upcountry, midlands, and lowcountry, from plantation culture to urban servitude. First published between the late eighteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, these richly detailed firsthand accounts present a representative cross section of slave experiences, from religious awakenings and artisan apprenticeships to sexual exploitations and harrowing escapes. In their distinctive individual voices, narrators celebrate and mourn the lives of fellow slaves, contemplate the meaning of freedom, and share insights into the social patterns and cultural controls exercised during a turbulent period in American history. Each narrative is preceded by an introduction to place its content and publication history in historical context. The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina. I Belong to South Carolina reinserts a chorus of powerful voices of the dispossessed into South Carolina's public history, reminding us of the cruelties of the past and the need for vigilant guardianship of liberty in the present and future.I Belong to South Carolina is edited and introduced by Susanna Ashton with the assistance of Robyn E. Adams, Maximilien Blanton, Laura V. Bridges, E. Langston Culler, Cooper Leigh Hill, Deanna L. Panetta, and Kelly E. Riddle.

"1111356041"
I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives
2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Out of the hundreds of published slave narratives, only a handful exist specific to South Carolina, and most of these are not readily available to modern readers. This collection restores to print seven slave narratives documenting the lived realities of slavery as it existed across the Palmetto State's upcountry, midlands, and lowcountry, from plantation culture to urban servitude. First published between the late eighteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, these richly detailed firsthand accounts present a representative cross section of slave experiences, from religious awakenings and artisan apprenticeships to sexual exploitations and harrowing escapes. In their distinctive individual voices, narrators celebrate and mourn the lives of fellow slaves, contemplate the meaning of freedom, and share insights into the social patterns and cultural controls exercised during a turbulent period in American history. Each narrative is preceded by an introduction to place its content and publication history in historical context. The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina. I Belong to South Carolina reinserts a chorus of powerful voices of the dispossessed into South Carolina's public history, reminding us of the cruelties of the past and the need for vigilant guardianship of liberty in the present and future.I Belong to South Carolina is edited and introduced by Susanna Ashton with the assistance of Robyn E. Adams, Maximilien Blanton, Laura V. Bridges, E. Langston Culler, Cooper Leigh Hill, Deanna L. Panetta, and Kelly E. Riddle.

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I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives

I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives

I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives

I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives

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Overview

2010 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Out of the hundreds of published slave narratives, only a handful exist specific to South Carolina, and most of these are not readily available to modern readers. This collection restores to print seven slave narratives documenting the lived realities of slavery as it existed across the Palmetto State's upcountry, midlands, and lowcountry, from plantation culture to urban servitude. First published between the late eighteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth, these richly detailed firsthand accounts present a representative cross section of slave experiences, from religious awakenings and artisan apprenticeships to sexual exploitations and harrowing escapes. In their distinctive individual voices, narrators celebrate and mourn the lives of fellow slaves, contemplate the meaning of freedom, and share insights into the social patterns and cultural controls exercised during a turbulent period in American history. Each narrative is preceded by an introduction to place its content and publication history in historical context. The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina. I Belong to South Carolina reinserts a chorus of powerful voices of the dispossessed into South Carolina's public history, reminding us of the cruelties of the past and the need for vigilant guardianship of liberty in the present and future.I Belong to South Carolina is edited and introduced by Susanna Ashton with the assistance of Robyn E. Adams, Maximilien Blanton, Laura V. Bridges, E. Langston Culler, Cooper Leigh Hill, Deanna L. Panetta, and Kelly E. Riddle.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781570039010
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Publication date: 06/05/2010
Pages: 328
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Susanna Ashton is an associate professor and associate chair in the Department of English at Clemson University. She is the author of Collaborators in Literary America, 1870–1920 and coeditor of These "Colored" United States: African American Essays from the 1920s.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Editorial Method ix

Introduction 1

Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher (1798) 14

"Clarinda: A Pious Colored Woman of South Carolina" (1875) 40

"Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave" (1838) 49

The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina John Andrew Jackson (1862) 83

My Life in the South Jacob Stroyer (1885) 127

Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days, or a Story Based on Facts by the Reverend I. E. Lowery (1911) 167

Before the War and after the Union: An Autobiography Sam Aleckson (1929) 228

Afterword-the Slave Experience in South Carolina 294

Index 307

About the Editors 318

What People are Saying About This

Mark M. Smith

Capturing with fidelity the texture of life for enslaved South Carolinians has challenged even the most thoughtful students and scholars of slavery. That challenge has now been lessened with the publication of I Belong to South Carolina. It is at once a well edited collection of rare and under-studied slave narratives, a powerful retelling of the slave experience in the Palmetto state, and, perhaps most conspicuously, a window into the complex cultural and social topography of one of America's most robust slave societies.

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