Thirty Years a Slave - From Bondage to Freedom: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter

Louis Hughes was born as an enslaved person in Virginia and at age twelve was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. Sold to a wealthy slaveowner, who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi, Hughes was held in bondage as an enslaved house servant for three decades. Near the end of the Civil War, he escaped to the Union lines with the paid help of two Union soldiers. Hughes later returned to the plantation to liberate his wife, and the couple made their way...