In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...
A month and a half after his arrest for leading an abolitionist raid in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, John Brown was hanged in Charles Towne. The governor, Henry Wise, received at least seventeen affidavits from Brown's friends, family, and fellow abolitionists. They all claimed that Brown was insane, and that insanity ran throughout his family history. Despite these letters, Wise allowed...
Like many young, adventurous men in the nineteenth century, Erastus Brown decided to explore the new frontier of the United States. Upon returning home from a trip to Texas, he wrote a letter to his sister, Millie, asking her to accompany him on his next trip. In discussing his trip to Texas, Erastus described his encounter with the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw Indian Nations. He described the Cherokee...
When Alexander Allen was asked to write an essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Slavery at Franklin College, Alabama, which he attended during the late 1830s and early 1840s, his answers were based upon the society in which he was immersed for all of his life. First, Alexander thought that slavery allowed a greater number of talented individuals to devote their time to studying and spreading...
E.M. Healy, a student at the University of Virginia in the years surrounding 1859, wrote a letter to his brother in Urbanna, Virginia on November 3. He was eager to explain to his family an event that had occurred a short distance from where he was in Albemarle County, Virginia. On the morning of October 16, 1959, John Brown, a radical abolitionist, and 17 white men and five African Americans...
Mary Mauldin, a member of the first graduating class of the Greenville Baptist Female College, would have been exposed to variety of subjects throughout her academic training. According to her college’s 1857 catalog, Mary would have taken a course of study much like that of her brothers at nearby Furman during her senior year. She would have taken advanced courses like history, botany, moral and...
John Brown, noted abolitionist, was arrested after his raid on Harper’s Ferry in early October 1859. He was taken to Charles Town, in present day West Virginia to be tried. Early in the trial, a surprise telegraph arrived that placed Brown’s sanity in question, but the court eventually disregarded the insanity plea largely aided by Brown himself who pronounced that he of all people, should know...
Rose Williams stood on the auction block hoping the enslaver who bought her mother and father would also buy her. Her family was recently put up for sale after her previous owner claimed he had no use for them. She was forced to watch as her siblings were sold to various owners, but she still had hope. Master Hawkins bought her mother and father together, so he could potentially buy her too. Though...
Less than two weeks after he attempted to initiate a slave uprising in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (currently West Virginia), John Brown was found “guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and murder in the first degree' (Life, Trial, and Execution, p. 93). This verdict was delivered on the fifth day of his trial, during which Brown had been confined...
In a letter to her friend Sally Ann, M.L. Moore described many elements of her day-to-day life. She includes information on her family, including the recent death of her mother, and other incidents in her community. Additionally, she wrote of trips into Washington and the sites that greeted her eyes on her excursions. Basically, she discussed affairs that you would expect a young woman to relate...