The Life of Jacob Stroyer.

             Slave narratives are the personal accounts by black slaves as well as exslaves about their experiences of slavery and the struggles to obtain freedom. The slave narratives offer chronological incidents into an individual's experiences and they provide the audience with an understanding into the writer's mind and the structure of the slave society. Exslaves, like Frederick Douglass, wrote narratives to try to persuade his readers about the injustices and immorals of slavery and also attempted to eventually abolish the institution of slavery. Other slaves wrote narratives to earn money to buy relatives out of slavery, to support themselves in their old age, and to financially support the causes of abolition. Jacob Stroyer wasn't any different. He wrote his book, My Life in the South, to show the harsh realities of slavery and to document his life on a large slave plantation in South Carolina. .

             .

             Jacob Stroyer was one of fifteen children born on a plantation in 1849. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed Stroyer in 1864, he spent 15 horrible years in bondage. In Stroyer's book, he describes the cruel conditions he endured on a daily basis from whipping, to being nearly starved to death. Stroyer describes living in one cabin with two large families. How could two families sleep in such a small cabin? Stroyer describes the tension it caused living so close together. Families often competed against one another for food. When someone stole a hog from the master and brought the meat home, the other family reported the thief to the master. That person suffered severe consequences. Stroyer describes how the family sleep when it got so hot during the summer. "When it was too warm for them to sleep comfortably, they all slept under trees until it grew too cool" (Stroyer 57). .

             .

             Stroyer , however, was very fortunate enough to have not been separated from his family.