Henry Clay Bruce

Feeling no loyalty to the South that had made captives of them, the slaves of the Confederacy lived in fear of retribution by their masters and in hope of a Union victory that would destroy the region where they lived. In the border state of Missouri, the grim struggle between Union and Confederate sympathizers took a brutal toll on the slaves, who were watched, suspected, and often hunted down by poor whites seeking bounty payments and other favors in the struggle to survive and support their own families. And as Confederate recruits left the territory they were replaced by bandits whose only goal was the pillage of unguarded farms and unwary travellers.

In his memoir The New Man, Henry Clay Bruce relates the tragic events suffered by his fellow slaves, the sympathetic actions of his owner, as well...