I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives

Before the War and after the Union: An Autobiography, by Sam Aleckson (1929)

Before the War and after the Union: An Autobiography, by Sam Aleckson (1929)
Introduction Susanna Ashton and Laura V. Bridges One might think that the hardships of life under slavery would so alienate people from their surroundings that they would cast off any allegiance to the place of their bondage. After all, many enslaved people were certainly haunted by dreams of escaping and leaving their farms, their states, or the United States itself. And yet, as the life of Sam Aleckson illustrates, enslaved people could be just as tied to a sense of place as anyone else. Furthermore, Aleckson’s Charleston upbringing in comparative comfort and ease, free from much of the violence and brutality that often characterized the slave experience , allowed him forever to identify himself fondly and firmly with that city. Although born a slave in 1852, Aleckson had many comforts of a typical white child, or at least that is how he seems to present it. Indeed, he hardly makes reference to his bondage throughout the text, although he certainly tells of hardships other slaves faced. Aleckson’s narrative focuses on the events and places that helped shape his character and personality. He opens the first chapter with his devotion to the city he calls home. He introduces charming images of his original owner’s house on Guignard Street, including “the ‘Four o’clocks,’ that grew there in great profusion and various colors,” his white playmates, and his faithful dog called Watch. Though he urges that, provided the power, he would have changed his status as a slave, he writes, “but I should not have changed the place; for it is a grand old city, and I have always felt proud of my citizenship.” Aleckson’s narrative offers an especially nuanced understanding of slavery in South Carolina, for while he contradicts what we might assume about Before the War and after the Union | 229 the demoralizing institution of slavery and fills his memoir with fond memories of friends, family, and religion, he nonetheless makes it clear that “there is nothing good to be said of American slavery.” Much of his gentle nostalgia might be attributed simply to the fondness many elderly people have for their youth, no matter what their actual experiences might have been; yet Aleckson always makes sure to temper such wistfulness with the insights he gained over the years. These insights were, literally and figuratively , revelations of experience and survival. It is not coincidental that at the time of this narrative’s composition at the turn of the century he was recovering from a recent illness that had nearly lost him his eyesight. When his doctor declared that Aleckson would be completely blind in six months, Aleckson endeavored to write his narrative as a means of financial supplement in his impending old age and with declining eyesight. When he was “past middle life,” he “began to write at night often under poor light, being scarcely able to see the words as I traced them.” He wrote against time, fearing blindness, and finished his manuscript only to set it aside as “untoward conditions prevented publication.” Although his sight miraculously recovered, the book was not published until 1929, fifteen years after his death. The preface with which he opens his narrative frames his story as inspiring and educational but also as sobering to a later generation perhaps inclined to take its good fortune for granted. He argues that “there are some things that should never be forgotten.” Without overplaying the metaphor, he nonetheless used his restored sight to give eyewitness testimony to the slave experience and to analyze from the perspective of an adult much of what he was oblivious to as a boy. Aleckson’s tone is marked by a careful rhetoric of wry reflection invoked to belie any bitterness. For instance, in reference to his service in the Confederate army, he simply writes, “I have never attended any of the Confederate reunions. I suppose they overlooked my name on the army roll!”* When describing his great grandfather’s repute as a handsome man, he adds, “fine looking for a Negro I believe is the usual qualification.” As these comments illustrate, Aleckson tempered his solemn disgust of slavery with gentle sarcasm, perhaps to make his stories palatable for future generations. Sam Aleckson’s happy childhood is most evident by the circumstances under which he lived—an intact family, devoted and caring mistresses, and so little hard labor that he was permitted the autonomy...