Kelly Haw
HIST 2010-007
April 28, 2014
A Year in the South: 1865 In the book “A Year in the South: 1865” written by Stephen V. Ash there are four Southerner’s stories told about what life was like for each of them in the South during the final year of the Civil War in 1865. Both conflict and chaos occupied all people in the South, just like characters Louis Hughes, Samuel Agnew, Cornelia McDonald, and John Robertson. Hughes was a slave from the Deep South, Agnew a preacher and son of a planter, McDonald a newly widowed mother of seven, and Robertson who was a former Confederate soldier; these characters are examples of Southerners with different backgrounds who still felt the hardships during the first and final months of the Civil War. Louis Hughes, a slave originally trained as a butler, spent the majority of the Civil War on the salt works located by Alabama’s Tombigbee River. Though the salt works called for long hours and hard labor, Hughes adapted rather well to this change in employment environment. Being granted permission by Benjamin Woolsey (the state Salt Commissioner), Hughes began selling tobacco plugs, which gave him and his wife Matilda a rather decent income boost during the latter part of the war. This “happy time” for Louis Hughes and his wife did not last long once the Confederate authority in South Alabama started to come to an end. Hughes and his wife were shipped off to the Mississippi salt works by their owner and held in captivity for a few months, even after the war came to a close. Though his owner was keeping close watch, Hughes managed to escape to Memphis, get ahold of two helpful Union officers, and took them back to Mississippi as assistance so he could break the other slaves/his family free. Hughes and his wife went back to Mississippi, then Cincinnati, and then they decided to try and move/escape to Canada. Thanks to Hughes’