Recollections of my slavery days.

William Henry Singleton. Recollections of My Slavery Days. Intro. Katherine Mellen Charron and David S. Ceceiski. Raleigh, NC: Department of Cultural Resources, 1999. 123 pp. $16.00.

William Henry Singleton grew up as a slave in North Carolina, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and spent his postwar career in various cities in the North, where he was a popular speaker on patriotic occasions, especially in Peekskill, New York, during his residence there from 1907 to 1924. He frequently recounted his experiences to school children and to youths who gathered on his front porch. In 1922, at the age of seventy-nine, he wrote a brief memoir that was serialized in a Peeksklll newspaper and later issued in a limited-edition pamphlet. Even though a work based on Singleton's career entitled Contraband of War was published in 1970, his pamphlet-sized memoir remained ignored for almost eighty years. The recollections of scores of former slaves published following the appearance of the first such work in 1760 have been studied and analyzed by a host of talented scholars, including John Blassingame, William L. Andrews, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., but Singleton's work does not appear in eve n the most comprehensive scholarly surveys of slave narratives.

Such omission is unlikely to occur in the future because of the appearance of this richly annotated edition of Singleton's recollections by Katherine Mellon Charron and David S. Cecelski, who have also provided a lengthy and informative introduction, a chronology of Singleton's life, numerous photographs and maps, and various genealogical charts. They have amply demonstrated that they are practitioners of rigorous scholarship as well as highly skilled historical detectives whose efforts have succeeded in rescuing Singleton's memoir from obscurity. Although the text of these recollections consists of only twenty-three pages, it reveals in lean, straightforward prose much about one of the most important chapters in the American past.

Born about 1843 in New Bern, North Carolina, Singleton spent most of his first twenty years on a nearby plantation owned by John Handcock Nelson. His mother, Lettice Nelson, and at least three of her children-William Henry, Hardy, and Joseph, all bearing the surname Singleton-were Nelson's slaves. Although the overwhelming majority of the names, places, and other specific references in Singleton's memoir have been confirmed in the documentary record by Charron and Cecelski, there are a few intriguing discrepancies between the record and Singleton's assertions. One is his claim that his owner was John Singleton, and another his identification of his white father as the brother of John H. Nelson. However, Charron and Cecelski have documented beyond any doubt that his owner was John H. Nelson and that his father was William G. Singleton, a bachelor, who resided in New Bern. On a marriage license in 1929 Singleton correctly identified his father. In his recollections he declared: "Now, although I was born black a nd a slave, I was not all black." In fact, he was very light-skinned, and claimed that his owner repeatedly tried to sell him because the Nelsons were embarrassed to have such a close relative among their slaves.

Indisputably, Singleton was an individual of strong will and independent spirit, who ran away from his master four times and who constructed his recollections around a pattern of defiance and resistance. One of the most notable passages in his autobiography is the description of how he was sold to the owner of a "slave farm" in Georgia, escaped his wretched life there to return to his mother and brothers, and then eluded his master for a time. In describing this episode as well as others, Singleton emphasizes his continual quest for personal freedom.

An opportunity to participate in the liberation of himself and his race came with outbreak of the Civil War when Union troops occupied New Bern. Singleton moved into Union lines, made himself useful to Union officers, and against their counsel began recruiting blacks for service in the Union army. While a servant of General Ambrose Burnside, he met and had a memorable conversation with President Abraham Lincoln about using black troops, a conversation that he recounted often and that constitutes one of the most dramatic encounters described in his memoirs. In 1863 Singleton and the black troops he recruited ultimately became a part of the Thirty-Fifth Regiment, United States Colored Troops, and took part in a series of engagements.

Mustered out in 1866, Singleton headed north, where he spent the next seventy-two years as a devout churchman and sometime preacher while pursuing various other occupations. He was an active member of a Masonic order and the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a Union veterans' organization. When he died in 1938, at the age of ninety-five while attending a GAR encampment in Des Moines, Iowa, he was survived by his third wife and a daughter.

Singleton's autobiography exhibits features of both antebellum slave narratives and postbellum ex-slave reminiscences. In the vein of the former, he tells much about slave life, including references to the separation of families, whippings, slave patrols, and the denial of basic literacy, which had proved useful to abolitionists. Like other African American autobiographers after the Civil War when the antislavery issue had become obsolete, Singleton stressed the contributions made by his race to the nation and sought to convince whites that former slaves were entirely capable of performing the responsibilities of citizenship. He insisted that his willingness to sacrifice his life for the Union cause entitled him to freedom and first-class citizenship. Despite expressions of gratitude to the federal government and the American people for what they had done for him and his people, Singleton leaves no doubt that throughout his long life he remained steadfast in his opposition to all limitations on the civil righ ts of African Americans.

Though small in size, this book speaks to significant issues that remain relevant to contemporary American life.