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Summary Of Chapter 8 View From The Bottom Rail

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Chapter eight, View From the Bottom Rail, by Davidson Lytle and Mark Lytle in the book After the Fact, shows the hardships of the lives of slaves towards the end of the Civil War. This chapter includes the hardships of slave life, discrimination, first-hand accounts, and details about the journey to the North. The article jumps straight into the moments when the slaves get their freedom. “The thunder of freedom roared” as slaves were shocked that they were finally free. In fact, some were so shocked they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Most of the slaves “had no hesitation about choosing freedom , others staying with their masters because of intense loyalty and because some feared the Union Army. Even though they were the ones who freed the slaves some of the Union soldiers looked at slaves with hatred. The real reason for the war was to reunite the …show more content…

The elite, educated men accounted for most of the writing in this time period, making it difficult to find good first person slave views on the Civil War. There were only a few exceptions with blacks that could read and write. For example, Mary Chesnut who wrote a detailed diary of a common day during the Civil War that is very important to Historians today. A slave named Squires Jackson was reading the newspaper when his Master walked in and saw him reading it. Quickly thinking, Jackson turned the newspaper upside down held it up and said, “Confederates done won the war”. If Jackson had not written this down, we would never know this story. Most slaves wouldn't be able to record those events. Instead, his master would have recorded what he thought actually happened. This is what happened commonly during the Civil War. For the most part, slaves were illiterate and were generally were not able to record the events of the Civil War during the time

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