Thirty Years a Slave. Review and historical commentary.
757 views · Published 17 January 2018 · 13:08 · Indexed 21 September 2026
Channel: Alan Heath · 2018 · Travel & Events
The book Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter is available as a free pdf or as a free audio book from Libra Vox, the links are below. It was written by Louis Hughes and first published in Milwaukee by the South Side Printing Company in 1897. The author, Louis Hughes was born in 1832 on a plantation outside of Charlottesville, Virginia before being sold as a child to go south. His mother was a slave but his father was white. He does not mention his father in his account but the impression I get is that is mother was the victim of rape by her owner as often happened. The account starts with his separation from his mother at the age of ten, both mother and son thought he was going somewhere to do some work for the day, as it turned out, he was taken to be sold and he never saw his mother again. Whilst at the slave pen waiting for a buyer, he describes the whippings that took place and how slave owners outsourced punishment to slave traders. As the owners may not have wanted to whip their own slaves, the slaves were whipped by these professionals and the money thus earned made up a sizeable part of the earnings of the slave traders. Slaves were given there 39 strokes of the lash – this was set as the maximum in colonial days and the slave pen was a relatively public place but in more private places, the poor slaves undoubtedly got whipped much more. Continue reading : http://www.motorhomefulltime.com/blog/thirty-years-slave pdf of book : http://blackhistory-101.com/thirty-years-a-slave/
