[Editor's Note 1: As one certainly has noticed, in the previous months there has been a regrettable slowdown in the content provided by the site. Time management in and of itself is worthy of its own post, but needless to say, the busyness of our final semesters of coursework have diverted attention from posting on the website. Hopefully it has been some consolation to everyone that our Twitter account has remained relatively up-to-date.]
[Editor's Note 2: In lieu of the exciting news that 12 Years a Slave, the film adaptation of Solomon Northrup's 1853 slave narrative, won the Oscar for the Best Picture of the Year, I'd like to offer a suggestion as to how these rich resources - a number of which can be found at UNC's Documenting the South database - maybe be used for historiographical purposes.]
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| William L. Sheppard, "The First Cotton Gin," 19th cent. |
Peter Wood once admitted to anxiety regarding his source base when
he began his research on slavery in colonial South Carolina. Bracing himself
for the possibility that what was necessary for his work may “scarcely” exist,
Wood instead discovered that slave voices proved “more than ample” through
myriad primary sources.[1] Often,
studying slavery requires a large mount of reading in the lines, such as
utilizing the records of the Royal African Company to illuminate the morbid
nature of the Middle Passage for saltwater slaves and examining probate records
to gauge the economic optimism owners viewed the reproductive capabilities of
their female human property.[2] Most
valuable to historians, though, are the narratives left by escaped or
emancipated former slaves who detailed their experiences whilst in the throes
of the peculiar institution. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a
close reading of a slave narrative – in this case, the narrative of James
Williams – can act as a historiographical lens to recent scholarship on
American slavery.
