Since the 13 British Colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776 until the end on the Civil War in the year 1865 race based chattel slavery had been an integral part of economic and social dynamic of the United States of America. The most widely read historical references from the antebellum era were written from the perspective of white American men. Because of that slaves and their experiences are often viewed as monolithic but each individual slave had their own personal experience based on their location, the person that enslaved them or the teaching from the people that raised them. Fortunately, many slaves learned to write or they were approached by authors or journalists and their stories were recorded and we are about to hear from them in their own words. One of those individual is Betty Guwn who was living in Muncie, Indiana when a narrative about her experiences as a slave was recorded by Hattie Cash, daughter.

Betty Guwn was born on 25 March 1832 on a tobacco plantation near Canton, Kentucky. She was married to slave from a nearby plantation, her master negotiated with her husband’s master and bought him, then they were set up in a shack where they lived until the end of the Civil War. She bore 15 children while she was enslaved. Guwn says that she was the personal attendant of the mistress of the house and she was responsible for many important tasks in the house, however when the tasks were complete the mistress would send her out into the tobacco field. According to Guwn the discipline was harsh and she was often “lined up” with the other slaves that regularly worked in the field. Lined up is the phrase that she uses to described the whippings that the slaves would receive when they disobeyed the overseers or worked too slowly. She recalls the story of preparing to travel with the master and mistress to a Mississippi cotton plantation that he owned every year and being stripped down by the mistress and having money taped to her body and then being redressed with many layers to disguise the bulge. The master and mistress were afraid of robbers along the way to the deep south. 

When the Civil War began in 1861, Guwn states that they would watch intently and were keenly aware of the progress of the battles. Her husband escaped and joined General Ulysses Grant in the capture of Fort Donelson in Tennessee. When the war was over her family was prepared to leave the enslaver’s plantation but they were begged to stay and work, with offers to pay them weekly. Guwn doesn’t say whether they stayed and worked or not. It was 1937 or 1938 at the time that her daughter recorded this narrative Guwn was 105 years old.

There were several aspects of Guwn’s experience that I found to be atypical of the common story presented about slaves in America. For example, the fact that her enslaver bought her husband so that they could stay together. Another surprising aspect of the story that was the mistress of the house strapping her with cash and travelling from Kentucky to Mississippi. What level of trust or what precautions did they take to ensure that she did not run away with that money? I find it interesting to think about the prospect of a man that whipped you and sanctioned whippings for you, kept you in bondage is now begging you to stay and work for a wage. I am unsure of what I would do if such a scenario was presented to me.

(1936) Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 5, Indiana, Arnold-Woodson. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn050/

Riley, P. (2016). Slavery and the Democratic Conscience: Political Life in Jeffersonian America.

Gallagher, G. W., & Nolan, A. T. (2000). The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History.