I Belong to South Carolina

South Carolina Slave Narratives

Susanna Ashton

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781570039010, 9781570039003
• eBook ISBN: 9781611171679
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

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 The volume also features an afterword surveying other significant slave narratives and related historical documents on South Carolina.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.

INDEX

Aberdeen, 111

Abraham, 108–9, 112, 189, 273

Academy of Music, 282

Account of the Life of Mr. David George, from Sierra Leone in Africa: Given by Himself in a Conversation with Brother Rippon of London and Brother Pearce of Birmingham (George), 301–2

Adam, 94, 95, 108, 204

Advocate of Freedom, The, 51, 53–54, 55, 61, 70, 74, 77, 81

Affa, 62

African Free School (New York), 42, 43, 44

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 130, 167, 170

Agile, 241

Aiken, S.C., 170, 182

Alabama, 51, 130, 152

Aleck, 190

Aleckson, Betsy Ann, 286

Aleckson, Dick, 286

Aleckson, Harry, 286

Aleckson, Matilda Jane, 286

Aleckson, Mrs., 286

Aleckson, Sam, 3–4, 12, 228–93

Aleckson, Tom, 286

Alex, 112

Amboy, N.J., 24,

American Anti-Slavery Society, 51

American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission (AFIC), 303

American Loyalist militia, 16

American Revolution, 3, 7, 14, 301

Anderson, Major, 258, 273

Anderson, Neddy, 109–10, 118

Anderson, William, 124

Andrews, Bishop, 182

Andrews, William L., 15

Annapolis, 30

Annie, 146

Appomattox Courthouse, 223

Appomattox, 177

Appraisement, 272

Arabic, 300–301

Ashley River, 63, 273, 274

Ashmore, John, 99

Atwood, E. S., 133

August, Uncle, 254–57, 275

Augusta, Ga., 140

Auld, Rev. F., 191

Austi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Editorial Method
• Introduction
• Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher (1798)
• “Clarinda: A Pious Colored Woman of South Carolina” (1875)
• “Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave” (1838)
• The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina, by John Andrew Jackson (1862)
• My Life in the South, by Jacob Stroyer (1885)
• Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days, or a Story Based on Facts by the Reverend I. E. Lowery (1911)
• Before the War and after the Union: An Autobiography, by Sam Aleckson (1929)
• Afterword—the Slave Experience in South Carolina
• Index