John M. Washington (May 20, 1838,

Fredericksburg, Virginia Fredericksburg is an independent city located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 27,982. The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the United States Department of Commerce combines the city of Fredericksburg wi ...

– 1918,

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

) was an American slave who was literate. After the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, he wrote one of the few slave narratives.

Early life

He was born into slavery in Fredericksburg. His mother, Sarah, was rebellious and tried to escape several times during his childhood. The first time, she was punished by being hired out for a time as a field hand. Despite the hardships, she took the time to teach him to read and write. The second time she was caught trying to escape, she was separated from her family. A cruel headmaster of a boarding school, Dr. Rev. Phillips of Stuart Hall School, took her as his personal servant. After a sickness, Washington was briefly reunited with his mother in Staunton. However, he was sent back after a couple of weeks to Fredericksburg after Washington did not respond to Phillips' harsh discipline. Later, he would recall that he learned the "cruelty of the white man" while at Stuart Hall.

Civil War

Soon after he returned to Fredericksburg, the Civil War broke out. When the Union temporarily occupied Fredericksburg in April 1862, Washington obtained his freedom. He was able to spy for a while for the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

. One of his biggest accomplishments as a spy was the outing of the Southern spy Belle Boyd. After the Union Army retreated, he was forced to escape to Washington, DC, leaving behind his wife; she later followed him.

Post-war

After the end of the war, Washington penned one of the few escaped slave narratives, '' of the Past'', in 1873. In 2007, Civil War historian

David W. Blight David William Blight (born 1949) is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previous ...

published ''A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation'', the two men being Washington and

Wallace Turnage Wallace Turnage (1846 – 1916) was an escaped slave who wrote a narrative that was published for the first time in 2007. He was born in North Carolina, and was the son of a fifteen-year-old female slave and a white man. He was sold multiple times ...

. Washington died in his son's house in 1918. His family still lives in Washington, D.C.

References

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