Out of the House of Bondage

Thavolia Glymph

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511812491.006

5 - Out of the House of Bondage

A Sundering of Ties, 1865–1866

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Thavolia Glymph

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Thavolia Glymph: Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina

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Summary

Sacrificed for nothing!

Emma Le Conte, ex-mistress

It was the fourth day of June in 1865 I begins to live…

Katie Rowe, ex-slave

The word home has died upon my lips.

Mary Jones, ex-mistress

…the conduct of the Negro in the late crisis of our affairs, convinced me that we have all been laboring under a delusion. Good masters and bad masters, all alike, shared the same fate – the sea of Revolution confounded good and evil.…I believed for a season that these people were content, happy, and attached to their master. I have lived to change all these opinions.

Augustin L. Taveau, ex-master

At the end of March 1865, with the war closing in, a group of female slaves left their chores to take a ride in their mistress's carriage. When they returned, their mistress whipped one of them, Laurie, and sent her away with instructions never to return to the yard. Two days later, Laurie, her mother, and her sister took four oxen and an ox cart, piled their belongings into the cart, and left. A party sent after them found them still on the road, dumped their belongings from the cart, and left the women where they stood. The path to freedom was never straightforward, but freedwomen were determined to take it. Laurie no longer had to put up with beatings from her mistress. Her mother no longer had to witness them silently or impotently.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Out of the House of Bondage
The Transformation of the Plantation Household
, pp. 137 - 166

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812491.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

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