Literary History

Slave Narratives and Civil War Memoirs, Letters, and Diaries

Overview
Two major issues divided the United States in the nineteenth century: slavery and the Civil War. As a result, slave narratives and Civil War memoirs, letters, and diaries written by generals, soldiers, and civilians became a part of literary history during this era.

Slave narratives emerged in the mid-eighteenth century and continued to be written after the Civil War. These first-person stories conveyed the realities of life as an enslaved person, from daily experiences to tales of escape and eventual freedom. Slave narratives were published to reveal the brutalities and injustices of slavery, document the lives of those bought and born into slavery, and further the abolitionist cause.

Many prominent writers emerged from the slave narrative tradition, many of whom had taught themselves how to read and write. Through their writing, they risked their lives in order to denounce the injustices of slavery. Some prominent examples of slave narratives are Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself by Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself by Olaudah Equiano.

The Civil War produced volumes of literature from both sides of the conflict, including memoirs written by generals, letters sent home by soldiers, and diaries by civilians. In these accounts, generals recollected great battles, soldiers wrote about life on the battlefield, and civilians described how the war affected their daily lives.

As the Civil War claimed lives and swept a destructive path throughout the South, writers documented the tragedies and atrocities of war. Historical insights were captured in such famous works as Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant and A Diary from Dixie, the original diary of Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut Jr., who was an aide to Confederate

Bibliography
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself (and other selections). New York: Library of America, 1994. Read three autobiographical tales of Douglass’s early life as a slave, his escape from slavery, and his eventual role as an abolitionist.

Truth, Sojourner. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998. One of the most famous slave narratives, written by a self-proclaimed “self-made woman.”

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Signet Classics, 2000. One of the first slave narratives ever written, and one of the few written by a woman, Harriet Jacobs.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. One of the first slave narratives; it introduced a wide audience to a world seen through the eyes of a slave.

Grant, Ulysses S. Personal and Selected Letters. New York: Library of America, 1990. These are the memoirs, or personal accounts, of the eighteenth president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, including selections of his personal letters.

Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller. A Diary from Dixie. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. This is the diary of Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut Jr.

Web links
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
This collection contains over 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 photographs of formerly enslaved people that were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progess Administration.

North American Slave Narratives
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/
This University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and [formerly enslaved persons] published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920.”

Voices from the Days of Slavery
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
In nearly seven hours of recorded interviews that took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine southern states, twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discussed how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, the coercion of enslaved persons, and freedom.

Letters from an Iowa Soldier in the Civil War
http://www.civilwarletters.com/home.html
A collection of letters written by Newton Robert Scott, Private, Company A, of the 36th Infantry, Iowa Volunteers. Scott’s letters provide revealing details about the war and the living conditions in which soldiers lived.