On Wed Jan 10 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>Speaking as an eastern NC cracker, I have to say that my last shred of
>>admiration for Marse Robert fell away when I came across a particular
>>WPA slave narrative. A former slave of Lee tells how he tried to
>>escape, was caught, then whipped by an overseer under Lee's personal
>>supervision ("Lay it on well", quoth the Marble Man), then treated to
>>a bath of salt water for his wounds. Don't have the citation, but I
>>remember it well.
>
> Any idea where I should start hunting for the citation? I would love
> to have it...
A promising place to start might be _Slave Testimony_(1977), edited by John Blassingame. A bibliographer says:
The largest collection of annotated and authenticated accounts of
slaves ever published in one volume has to be Slave Testimony: Two
Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies. In
them, the slaves of Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Henry Clay, and
others speak for themselves about their culture, plantation life, the
food, clothing, and shelter, the sexual exploitation of black women,
and the psychological response to bondage. The views given are those
of house servants and field hands, docile slaves and rebels, urban
slaves and rural slaves, slaves with kind masters and those with cruel
ones.
If you track down the exact cite, would you report back for the rest of us? Meanwhile I'll look in my copy of the WPA narratives as soon as I figure out who I lent it too.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com