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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First Page] [3], (1) Lines: 0 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TE [3], (1) 1. Enslaved in Kentucky Tremble not before the free man, but before the slave who has chains to break. Margaret Fuller, 1844 Charles Young was born in 1864 in the slave quarters of a small farm in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. His parents were still living in bondage when Charles was born, which made him a slave as well. But while Charles’s parents were born and raised in slavery, Charles would grow up a free man. Still, it would take a war and the sacrifice of countless Americans, both black and white, to set him free. Charles escaped slavery in Kentucky with his parents when he was but an infant. Though spared the experience of the institution of slavery as a child, he lived with its bitter legacy through his parents and through the shared memory of the African American community. To understand Young, it is essential to appreciate his parents’ experiences as enslaved African Americans in Kentucky and as Civil War soldiers and refugees. Gabriel and Arminta Charles Young was born on March 12, 1864, to Gabriel Young and Arminta Bruen1 in Helena, Kentucky. On this day, Ulysses S. Grant assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in a civil war that was approaching its bloody end. Gabriel and his family lived in an old log house on Helena Station Road long used as slave quarters. The house lay near the small town of May’s Lick in southern Mason County, Kentucky.2 enslaved in kentucky 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [4], (2) Lines: 53 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal P PgEnds: [4], (2) A settler named Matthew Gray had built this log house in 1792 as his original homestead when his family cleared and settled the land. He later built a larger, more comfortable house and moved out of the two-story log structure. At some point the house was moved or the land around it sold to a neighboring farm. This may have occurred when Gray died in 1836, leaving two farms in Mason County to two sons and a property in Ohio to a third. Still later, the structure was used to house slaves. When Charles Young was born the cabin belonged to the farmstead of James Willett, a member of one of several branches of the Willett family in the area.3 May’s Lick lay to the south of the county seat of Maysville, which was situated on the Ohio River in the outer Bluegrass region of north-central Kentucky. This area, on the extreme northern rim of the Bluegrass, was a thriving agricultural region where hemp and tobacco were the primary crops. Slaves were central to the agricultural society of this part of Kentucky, especially on the larger hemp and tobacco plantations and farms.4 In contrast to slavery in the Deep South, with its sprawling plantations and longer growing seasons, slavery in the border state of Kentucky reflected greater diversity. Blacks constituted 20 percent of Kentucky’s population in 1860, but many were employed in manufacturing and in the cities. Most farms and small plantations in the Bluegrass had at most only a handful of slaves, and only about 12 percent of Kentucky’s slave owners kept twenty or more slaves. Prior to the Civil War, about 5 percent of Kentucky’s African American population of approximately two hundred thousand were free blacks.5 In spite of these differences between Kentucky and the Deep South, Gabriel and Arminta faced no kinder brand of servitude. Although their everyday lives might have been easier than those of the slaves on the sugar plantations of Louisiana or the cotton plantations of Mississippi, this did not change the fact that they livedandworkedinbondage.Theytoiledunderbackbreakingwork schedules, suffered forced separation from family, and faced physical and psychological abuse. African Americans living in slavery were deprived of their civil liberties, with virtually every aspect of their lives controlled by their owners. In many ways, slavery for the 4 [3.143.23.176...

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