¶ … primary source written by slave have picked Lewis Clarke and his book Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clark. In my opinion, excerpts from this book give a clear account about the condition of a slave in the South in the first half of the 19th and a revelatory story of a fugitive slave and his experience as he ran for freedom.
Lewis Clarke was born in 1812, in Madison County, Kentucky, as the son of a Scottish emigrant and a black mother. As such, he was a slave, owned by William Campbell. Upon his death, Lewis Clarke was sold to Betsy Branton and spend his years without his mother, who had been sold at a different plantation, several tens of miles away. Escaped from the plantation in 1841, he lived the remainder of his years, until his death in 1897, in Canada, where he published his book, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clark, in 1845.
The book is a complete and well-written biography of the writer, starting from a short account about his father and his early days ("My father was from Scotland, and by trade a weaver (...) About the year 1800, or before, he came to Kentucky, and married Miss Letitia Campbell, then held as a slave") to the way his owner, William Campbell died and Lewis was bought by Mrs. Betsey Banton ("At the age of six or seven years I fell into the hands of his sister, Mrs. Betsey Banton.").
According to his account, life was not easy in Betsey Banton's household, where he worked and lived as a slave. I am emphasizing this so we may a clue about the reasons that later led him to become a fugitive, considering the fact that escape was usually punishable by death. Beating and refined use of torture (Clark mentions in his memoirs an oak club that was used for beating the hands and feet until blisters appeared: "this was an oak club, a foot and a half in length...
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