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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tour de Force, December 4, 2007
There have been many books about slavery and the brutality of the life that so many people had to endure. Much of this has been documented by authors and historians, and told about in history books and fiction alike. Part of this record includes the slave narratives, first person accounts, written by slaves themselves, that detail their hardships and trials, and most of them, recounting their path to freedom. David Blight has two such narratives in his new, and frankly, phenomenal new book: A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. This is a book for your shelf.
Blight starts the book with a brief review of the history of slave narratives, the distinct differences between pre and post-emancipation narratives, and how these two remarkable narratives fell into his possession, both within six months of each other. He then retells their own lives, giving background and general information (including some from other slave narratives) to make the two men's accounts more whole.
The rest of the book is the actual narratives of both John Washington and Wallace Turnage. And what a powerhouse of writing both of these narratives are. Both men, finding their path to freedom during the Civil War, both with help from the Union army. But each man found his path to freedom in his own unique way, and both accounts are riveting memoirs of using wits, guts, and determination to ensure their survival.
It's so personal to read these. You get a sense of the men behind the words, it's almost like you are eavesdropping on a grandfather recounting his younger days to a granddaughter. The narratives are edited by Blight, but he largely seems to keep a hands-off attitude with both of them, leaving the reader the chance to experience the author first hand. You leave the narratives painfully wanting more ... even though Blight has provided more.
These narratives paint a picture of true American heroes. Men who lasted, despite incredible odds against them, to live and thrive beyond the situations they found themselves in. When Washington gets to live, as a freed man, in the same house in which he served as a slave, the sense of triumph is palpable, even though Washington is not gloating one bit. Much has been said about the brave soliders that lived and died for the American cause. These two men exemplify that to the fullest.
I finished this book with a sense of awe and wonder with these two men, and a desire to want more. This book is a true piece of scholarship, adding to the growing richness of slave narratives. Hopefully, as time progresses, we will unearth more views of this time long past, to remember and appreciate once again.
A true five star book!
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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A testament to the absolute brutality of the Southern system, November 30, 2007
The story of American slavery has to include the ills of the system, the changes wrought in the aftermath of emancipation and the precipitous slide down into the sins of segregation. In this book we have the complete story, wrapped around two authentic slave narratives. Because both writers, John Washington and Wallace Turnage, escaped from bondage and lived through the end of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and an America reunited and struggling with racial animosities and tensions, the book's author, David W. Blight, has used their accounts to paint the broad landscape.
Blight is the director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. He wrote, among other books, RACE AND REUNION, winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Lincoln Prize and the Bancroft Prize. He is dedicated to the principle that slavery has no benign aspect and that the sufferings and trials of men like Washington and Turnage to attain freedom are testament to the absolute brutality of the Southern system. With frequent quotes not just from the two narratives (which are included in their totality in the book, Washington and Turnage being uniquely credited as co-authors of A SLAVE NO MORE) but from the writings of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs among others, Blight illustrates what privations the Southern slave was willing to endure in the pursuit of the prize of freedom, a prize that brought no property, no wealth and few rights, but secured the right to pursue wealth and eventually own property.
Wright extols the sacrifices of the Union Army and the efforts of good souls who helped to manage "contraband camps" where ex-slaves gathered in their thousands to pray, practice their new vocations and get a start at life as free human beings. He has found scant evidence of the largely mythological kindly slave owners and records that after the word of the Emancipation Proclamation spread, mostly by hearsay amongst the illiterate "property" of the embattled South, "good slaves" in their droves left "good masters." As one slave owner admitted, "Those we loved best, and who loved us best --- as we thought, were the first to leave us."
John Washington was an urban black living in northern Virginia whose treatment was not as animalistic as that of Turnage, a North Carolina fieldhand sold first to an owner in Virginia and then to Alabama. Washington was taught to read at an early age, and by the time the war broke out, he had a free black woman for a wife and various well-paid jobs for the Confederates. He slipped into Union territory at great risk and assisted the Union Army, identifying Confederate traitors in his hometown. His story very poignantly highlights the sorrow of a young person who longs for the simple joys of freedom. Eventually he and his descendants became professional people.
Turnage did not fare so well in the aftermath of the war, his continuing "persecutions" as he put it, probably owing to his lower social status, as were his savage beatings at the hands of sadistic overseers and masters as a cocky teen. It was the refusal to accept being whipped that caused Turnage to try five times to escape. He hid from patrols, sentinels, police and even other slaves who fearfully would report escapees in order to avoid bloody reprisals. Through the two ex-slaves' eyes and Blight's extensive research, we see the repugnant details of slave marketing and exploitation. Both men were almost certainly the offspring of their white masters, and both revered their enslaved mothers and helped bring them into freedom's light.
Neither man ever knew the other. The diaries were presented to Blight almost simultaneously but separately. Both accounts are short, obviously composed so that generations to come would understand the impulse and the effort to attain freedom, and are truncated at the point when freedom was gained. Blight has filled in as much as possible the biographies of Washington and Turnage in the post-war years, a super-charged time when African Americans were both elated and dubious about their new status, and whites both North and South were trying to solidify personal and public attitudes about race.
Wallace Turnage, upon finding himself at last among friendly Yankees, wrote, "I now dreaded the gun, the handcuffs and pistols no more. Nor the blewing (sic) of horns and the running of hounds; nor the threats of death from the rebel's authority. I could now speak my opinion to men of all grades and colors, and no one to question my right to speak." John Washington underlined these words twice: "It was the First Night of my freedom" and declared, "It was Good Friday and the Best Friday I had ever seen."
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Reading for American History Buffs, December 23, 2007
History buffs in general will find "A Slave No More" a highly valuable read. For students of American history, and particularly for those who are interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction period, this book is must reading. There are not many first-person accounts by former slaves available to us. This volume contains two such narratives, hitherto unpublished: one is by Wallace Turnage and the other is by John Washington, both former slaves who found their way to freedom during the Civil War. David Blight presents them here in their original form "with virtually no changes to the grammar and spelling," although he has done some minor editing in their structure (primarily providing paragraph breaks) to assist in reading.
The reader is not, however, immediately thrust into the narratives themselves. Blight spends the first 162 pages introducing us to the two writers, using genealogical data, and to the context in which the narratives were written. Turnage's and Washington's escape to freedom occurred during the chaos of this nation's most bloody war (over 600,000 casualties) and amidst a political and cultural conflict (state's rights and slavery) which had been ripping the country apart for many decades. It is, I think, essential to understand the plight of the Black slave on a personal level, to understand what it means to be someone else's "property," completely and totally subject to someone else's will, to recognize and accept that slaves were not thought to be fully "human." Blight does an outstanding job of providing the necessary background for the narratives.
I recommend this book to all readers who love the study of history. It is a valuable contribution to the genre.
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