The Whipping Boy
By Richard Gibney

In the late 1800 a violent and comprehensive civil war began in the United States of America after Abraham Lincoln supported banning slavery. The war was a conflict between the Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South, Non-slavery against slavery. One of the most significant events in the history of the United States. The North was fighting to end slavery and protect the Union. Richard Gibney addresses the controversial subject slavery in his short story ”The Whipping Boy” that takes place in the end of the American Civil War where slavery was abolished.
”The Whipping Boy” starts in medias res in a slave plantation in the southern part of America around the late 1800 (1864-1865). The reader is introduced to three slaves: Martha, Mikey and Tommy. They work and live at a plantation owned by their masters: Old Mrs. Gage, who is very sick and cries bitter tears over her husband’s death and the young First Lieutenant in the Confederate army, Sterling Gage, who has been in battle at the front for a year.
The plot takes off when the three slaves are informed that slavery has been abolished: ”It was the day after the boy from the Union had come to the farm to let the slaves know they were freemen”.
The action rises as the slaves are declared freemen and decide to travel to the north and get jobs. ”Then they could all go North, Mikey, his new wife and his brother, all working for wages in the city.” They had stopped working in the fields but Martha does not stop working. She continued to service Old Mrs. Gage. “If Martha didn’t serve Mrs. Gage, the old woman would have starved”. “”we’s free to do as we like””. They decided to stay until master Sterling Gage returned from the war. Mikey had built a grudge towards master Sterling Gage after years of poor and inhumane treatment and slavery. ”Mikey said the whole family was