One of the problems in properly commemorating slave emancipation for the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War is the relative lack of black voices, especially slaves. This is particularly true of contemporaneous voices. That is, the words of African Americans from the time of the Civil War itself. Certainly, many former slaves later shared their stories with the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, in autobiographies, and other places, such as Civil War pension file testimony (please forgive the self promotion). These sources, while valuable, are dogged by fading memories, colored by subsequent events, and reshaped by the agendas of the people relating them. Hence, while by no means perfect, contemporary black voices of the Civil War have a greater reliability than later sources.
Yet the words of slaves from the time of the Civil War itself are exceedingly rare. First, only a small part of the slave population was literate, probably less than 10 percent. Slaveholders believed literacy made slaves discontented with their condition and state law in the South generally prohibited educating slaves. Second, even if slaves could write, it was rare that their words were preserved. Those that survived usually did so because they some how came into the hands of the federal government.
Such was the case of a letter written 150 years ago today by a liberated slave named John Boston. On January 12, 1862, Boston put pen to paper to let his wife in Maryland know he had escaped successfully and found refuge with a New York regiment then encamped in Virginia. The letter was some how intercepted and made its way via a committee of the Maryland legislature, handling the interests of loyal slaveholders in the state, to Union Army commander, George McClellan, and from him to the U.S. War Department. From the War Department, it eventually was deposited with other federal papers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where it was discovered eventually by researchers of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland. It is from their website that the text of Boston’s letter is taken, which follows. It is a powerful testimony not only of the preciousness of freedom to the slaves, but also the importance of family in the 19th-century slave community.
Maryland Fugitive Slave to His Wife
Upton Hill [Va.] January the 12 1862
I’d say he wrote it very carefully so that, if it fell into white hands, as it did, it would not anger them.