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By John Hennessy

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

THE VOICE OF the slave is rarely heard. During the more than two centuries of slavery in America, millions of Africans and African-Americans were held in bondage. Of those, only about 200 left behind narratives that have found their way into print. The silence of the slave reverberates like none other, robbing history of a vital voice--specially in Fredericksburg. The voice of Fredericksburg's slaves has been virtually silent.

But with the publication of Yale professor David Blight's "A Slave No More" that has abruptly changed. Blight's work publishes in full the narratives of two slaves, one of them John Washington of Fredericksburg.

In a compact, lively, ungrammatical, and often profound 14,197 words, Washington describes his 16 years as a slave in Fredericksburg and his dramatic choice to run for freedom in 1862. Few slave memoirs match his for plainspoken emotion and drama; he brings texture to slavery and gives voice to a slave--his life, mind, and heart. The Christian Science Monitor calls the narrative "powerful and poignant."

A slave in Fredericksburg

John Washington was born in 1838 to a white father whose identity we know not and to a devoted mother, Sarah, who was a slave to the Ware family. The Wares lived in and operated what was then the Farmer's Bank (now the National Bank Building) on Princess Anne Street. What was likely John's bedroom still exists in the living quarters upstairs.

Much of John Washington's life played out within five blocks of the National Bank building, and his memoir is a travelogue of places familiar to Fredericksburgers: St. George's, Faulkner Hall, the African Baptist Church (now Shiloh Old Site, of which John was an original member), and the river. The Rappahannock is omnipresent in Washington's memoir, central to his life, his refuge. Eventually it would be his passageway to freedom in 1862.

Much as we appreciate Washington's glimpses of physical Fredericksburg, far more important is his unique perspective on cultural Fredericksburg. His life as a slave was far more privileged than that of slaves in the surrounding counties, who worked fields and mines rather than tending to the wants of a citified owner.

Washington had more freedom of movement, more personal interaction with friends and neighbors. He suffered less hard labor, received more opportunity for education (he could both read and write), and knew more of national and world events than rural slaves. His food was better, his medical care swift and diligent. He suffered no physical punishment. His world seems to have been as good as it got for a slave.

Longing for freedom

But perhaps the greatest value of Washington's memoir lies in this: He shows vividly that slavery even at its most "benign" was anything but benign. Looming over John Washington's life as a slave was anger, sadness, longing and a fierce desire for freedom.

He chafed at not being permitted to go to the occasional fairs--for which he needed not only permission of his owner, but a pass from the town government. He snarled at being confined. He wrote of the 1850s, "Imagine a boy about 16 or 17 years of age in good health with Many rolicking fun loving companions playing in full sight of the house on a bright Sunday morning and that boy only permitted to See all this from an open window."

He railed at the injustice of his years-long separation from his mother, imposed upon him at age 12 when she was hired out to Staunton. His description of her departure is wrenching.

He sought freedom constantly--and for Washington freedom came in many forms. He, like many slaves, always looked for chances to expand his freedom within the confines of slavery--to expand his space, his free time, his ability to see his future wife, Annie. He lied, he deceived, he concealed, he bargained--all in the name of freedom. Such quests, such bargaining were an everyday fact of most slaves' lives. Freedom. As much of it, wherever it could be gotten.

His greatest dream was absolute freedom. Modern historians might still argue what the Civil War was about, but for John Washington there was not a doubt: slavery. He called Fort Sumter not the beginning of the Civil War but the "Death knell of slavery" and reveled, "Little did I think that my deliverance was so near at hand."

A different perspective

Indeed one of the great virtues of Washington's memoir is that it compels us to see well-known events in a way we have traditionally not seen them. Here in Fredericksburg, the arrival of the Union army was and is almost always narrated as tragedy. When white resident Helen Bernard saw the blue columns in Stafford for the first time in April 1862, she wrote, "It is heart sickening to think of having our beautiful valley that we have so loved and admired all overrun & desolated by our bitter enemies "

But for John Washington the arrival of the Yankees meant the fulfillment of his greatest aspiration: "I could not begin to express my new born hopes for I felt already like I Was certain of My freedom now."

Hours later, John Washington made his lifelong hope for freedom real. He crossed the Rappahannock into Union lines (we can locate the spot within a matter of feet--at the upper end of what is now Old Mill Park). He was, he tells us, "dumb With joy and could only thank God and Laugh."

Washington would be among the first of perhaps 10,000 slaves who crossed the Rappahannock to freedom that spring and summer. But of those thousands, Washington is the only one who tells us (powerfully, too) what that freedom meant, what it felt like. And we can understand his joy, because his voice has already painted for us a vivid picture of what he left behind: the pain, sadness, and struggles of a life in slavery.

With the publication of John Washington's memoir, the voice of the slave has been heard again, and our view of mid 19th-century Fredericksburg has been enriched immeasurably.

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