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EXPERIENCES IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL BY TRINITY GIDDINGS
North Atlantic and London, England, September & October, 1863.
In the South they called absconded slaves missing property; in the North, contrabands; here, on board Her Majesty’s Ship Vigilant, they called me ma’am. Yes, they did!
Yet despite the joy of freedom, my new surroundings brought on an unsettling edge of hysteria. That may sound downright peculiar, but it was like this: all my life in b*****e; only place I knew, the plantation; only foreigner I ever saw, some Bohemian fire-eater at a circus Missy Antonia took me to some years gone. Of course, I’d read books about people in other lands. But reading is one thing; experience, that’s a lot different.
So here I was in this crazy world where all I’d known got stood on i
