Handwritten abolitionist diary of William Wood, and later, other members of his family. Approximately 288 pages, 4to, original half-calf over marbled boards. Entries primarily in ink and generally quite legible. First 47 pages are written regarding slavery directly prior to the Civil War.
 

An original and unpublished diary kept by William Wood, an ardent New York abolitionist, and comprising entries written between 1859 and 1892, including a substantial and especially significant portion recorded in slaveholding Mississippi on the eve of the Civil War. From the years following 1881, the journal would be continued by Wood’s family, documenting their lives during the Reconstruction Era of the United States.

Wood, an attorney and committed Northern abolitionist, was residing in Mississippi two years before the outbreak of the Civil War. His diary offers a vivid, revealing, and often deeply disturbing account of slavery as he encountered it in 1859 and 1860. Written from the perspective of a hostile outsider to the slaveholding order, the journal preserves a rare primary account of Southern attitudes toward slavery, secession, race, and violence, as well as Wood’s own alarm at the brutal normalcy with which such practices were sustained.
 

Dated 20 December 1859, Wood records the danger attached to his presence in a society whose principles he openly rejected:

 
”...I have been warned to leave the place as an abolitionist. I am told that I must leave the place tonight, that if I don’t leave by tomorrow morning at ten o’clock I will get a rope around my neck…It might have a different effect upon me if the threatener had not been a drunken man…”
 

As sectional tensions sharpened in the months immediately preceding the Civil War, Wood found himself in direct contact with white Southerners whose political and religious convictions were bound up with the defense of slavery. On 29 January 1860, he writes:
 

“Some men are bound to dissolve the Union. One man, a Hard Shell Baptist, thinks that the Devil has its Headquarters at the North. Says that the Devil's sins start at the North. He thinks the North [has been] given over to their errors, that God has forsaken them. He argues that they are just as much warring against the Will/Pleasure of God in Abolitionism and is arguing to do away with the institution…”.
 

As an outsider within a slaveholding community, Wood’s perspective allowed him to observe and record, in remarkable detail, the language, habits, and assumptions of those around him in a manner seldom encountered. As he moved among Mississippians, he preserved conversations that now stand as arresting primary evidence of the everyday realities of slavery. Particularly harrowing is his account of an encounter with a slave hunter, entered on 4 March 1860:
 

“The man said he had followed hunting n—--rs five years of his life and had not shot but one. Said he had as leave shoot a n—-r as a bear if he turned upon him... A woman came to the door and called for her husband. He went out & immediately the crack of the whip and the howling and begging of the N—-- was heard. He probably got 8 or 10 blows. The man came back without a word or comment resumed what he was called off from…”
 

Elsewhere, Wood repeatedly records incidents of whipping and punishment, noting with particular force both the suffering of the enslaved and the chilling composure of their punishers. On 8 March 1860, he writes:
“8 March 1860–Saw a n—-r whipped Monday. He took it without resistance but manifested a disposition to get away. Took the whip in his hand but did not squeeze it. Got about 8 blows…”

On February 26, 1861, Wood encountered an enslaved man who had been found. Through this interaction, Wood made note of the chains around his neck as well as documented a brief biography on the man’s life. These details, though harsh in nature, provide insight into the life of an enslaved–details which were not commonly recorded: “Mr. Pruit brought a runaway n—-r in last evening who had been gone from him…Had chain around his neck fastened by large padlocks, another at other end, chain 7 or 8 feet long. N—-r had good hat + shoes + pants, poor coat + shirt…he said he was attempting to go back to his old master Mr. John Johnson of Madison Co. from whom he said he was stole when 13 yrs old by a horse farm. Said his mother was a Squaw and his father was a slave.” 

 
Wood also witnessed numerous slave auctions, which he describes with exceptional precision and emotional force. His observations rank among the diary’s most compelling passages, documenting the sale of men, women, and children while also revealing the ways in which colorism operated within the slave market. Of one group offered for sale, he notes:
 

“…In the lot of nine there was but one pure Black. The men bragged of themselves of what they could do, said they wanted good masters and then they would do their part. Give them enough to eat and treat him well and if he didn’t do his part he was willing to suffer the consequences…”

Wood notes the dynamics of familial separation, and the lightness at which it was regarded by slave owners: 

“Then a woman brought 1410. Then her husband brought 1803. Sold to a different man. On being asked if he had a wife he said yes and pointed her out. A bystander informed the inquirer that he didn’t care anything for her ‘anyhow’.”

“A man about 31 years old brought $1955. Next, his wife + 3 children brought something over 2300. Mr. Tucker bought the man + Mr. Jones the woman + children.”

On another occasion, he records the sale of a woman and child in terms that highlight both the cruelty of the market and the open discussion of racial gradation within it:
 

”…Then a woman and child in her arms were put up and brought $1825. The child had blue eyes. A voice in the crowd said:” is the child black or white? Auctioneer:” Oh, the child is a little whiter than you are’.”

While many families were separated during auctions, Wood also documents the rare occasion at which families were kept together. 

“A woman, yellow. Good features. 29 years old. With child 3 yrs old. Was bought $1800. She cried when on the block considerably. Seemed to be anxious about her boy who was put up next, 7 yrs. old , bought $742 & bought by same man who bought the mother.” 

 
William Wood (1830–1903), a farmer and lawyer of Butler, New York, studied law at the University of Albany from 1855 to 1857. After relocating to Mississippi in 1859–1860, he attempted, without success, to sell atlases by subscription, a failure plausibly attributable in part to the hostile reception he encountered as a known abolitionist.

 
A historic journal preserving the observations of a Northern abolitionist who found himself in intimate proximity to the institutions and daily brutalities he most abhorred.

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