Wartime Struggles of a Virginia Farm Slave Family

Howard Ray White, 85, is the co-founder of the Society of Independent Southern Historians, host of a weekly television show titled "True American History," which covers from the settlement of Jamestown, to the end of the political reconstruction that followed the War Between the States. He is also author of over a dozen books focused on that war and our Southern people.

Here, in Wartime Struggles, you, the reader will experience the immense difficulties slave families experienced during four years of war in Virginia. To bring this historical fiction novel to you, I am creating a heroic fictional slave family of father, mother and four boys, ranging from 10 to16 years old. This slave family is owned by Edmund Ruffin's family and lives on Marlbourne Plantation, about 12 miles northeast of Richmond.

So, you will get to know the family of Edmund Ruffin, the South's greatest agricultural scientist who showed farmers from southeast Virginia to Mississippi how to neutralize too-acidic soils and double crop yields, greatly expanding the South's economy.

And, you will get to know Mrs. Robert E. Lee, who was forced to flee her home, Arlington Plantation, spending two weeks at Marlbourne Plantation during a time when Yankees were prevalent in the region. During those two weeks, Mrs. Lee, her two daughters and our heroic slave family became long-time true friends. Following the war, these two families are together at Lexington, Virginia as General Lee assumes the role of leading Washington College.

And you will get to know the very large First African Baptist Church in Richmond, a church made up of Black Christians. Nearby is a livery stable. There our heroic father and mother join with four others from First African in a Secret Study Group, seeking to find out who are the true friends of Black people, Whites in and of the North or Whites in and of the South.

And, surprise, our heroic slave family can read and write, although that is prohibited by Virginia law.