An Analysis Of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery

In Booker T Washington’s book, Up from Slavery, he explains his life during the Civil War and slavery. Up from Slavery explains in detail the hardships that Washington and all other slaves had to undergo, but also the freedom that came after it was all over. The first three chapters of his book tell of his living conditions during slavery, but how the slaves were not bitter toward their masters, and how freedom was after slavery. In the first chapter of the book, it goes into detail about the background of Booker T. Washington’s childhood and how he viewed slavery. It describes Washington’s responsibility, hard work, and the importance of education in his life. Washington was born on a plantation in Virginia. He did not know much about …show more content…
During the Civil War, one of Washington’s masters were killed and two were severely injured. The feeling of sorrow spread throughout the slaves when they heard of the death of Mar’s Billy, but this sorrow was only second to it in the “big house” when the two wounded masters were brought back. “When the two young masters were brought home wounded, the sympathy of the slaves was shown in many ways. They were just as anxious to assist in the nursing as the family relatives of the wounded. Some of the slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting up at night to nurse their wounded masters,” (page 9; paragraph 2). The slaves would have laid down their lives to protect the women and children who were left on the plantation while the men were at war. Once they were free, many of them even cared for their former masters who had become poor after the war. The slaves were also very unlikely to betray the trust of their masters. Washington tells of one major instance in which the slaves did not betray the masters’ trust, “one of the best illustrations of this which I know of is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia whom I met long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted labour where and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, the black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old