Title: Slavery in the Clover Bottoms
First published: 1998
Description: Born into slavery on a Tennessee plantation, John McCline escaped from bondage, worked for the Union Army in the Civil War, and eventually found a new life in the American West. Slavery in the Clover Bottoms is his own story, recollected in later years, of his life as a slave and as a free man.

McCline's memoirs, completed in the 1920s and now published for the first time, vividly describe the James Hoggatt plantation in Davidson County: the work and routine of slaves; their religious, family, and social life; the behavior of the overseers; and the atmosphere of violence under Mrs. Hoggatt's omnipresent whip. McCline tells of how he worked with livestock, a boy doing a man's job, until he ran away with the Thirteenth Infantry of Michigan late in 1862, when he was little more than ten years old.

For the next two-and-a-half years, young John worked as a teamster and officers' servant, and during that time he witnessed some of the Civil War's most famous battles - such as Murfreesboro, Chickamauga Creek, and Lookout Mountain - as well as Sherman's march through Georgia. Slavery in the Clover Bottoms joins an important body of newly published slave narratives. Its compelling story spans a continent and tells us much about relationships between the races in the middle and late nineteenth century.
Subjects: United States. Army. Michigan Infantry Regiment, 13th (1861-1865), Plantation life, United States, African American soldiers, Slaves, Soldiers, Childhood and youth, Biography, History, Slavery, Personal narratives, United states, army, regimental histories, Slaves, united states, Nashville (tenn.)
Places: Nashville Region, Nashville Region (Tenn.), Tennessee, United States
People: John McCline (1852-1948)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: E514.5 13th .M38 1998