SLAVE BOY FORCED INTO MASTER’S WIFE’S BED — THE NIGHTMARE THAT SHATTERED A PLANTATION
SLAVE BOY FORCED INTO MASTER’S WIFE’S BED — THE NIGHTMARE THAT SHATTERED A PLANTATION In the spring of 1847, on the prosperous Riverside Plantation in central Georgia, the rigid world of the Old South was about to crack wide open. Fifteen-year-old Samuel, a young house boy enslaved by the wealthy Ashford family, returned one April evening to his tiny quarters in the dependency building. There, sitting on his narrow bed in the flickering candlelight, was Margaret Ashford — the 28-year-old wife of his master. She wore her fine silk gown. Her expression held no anger, no command. Only something far more dangerous. Samuel froze in the doorway, heart hammering with bone-deep terror. This was impossible. Deadly. A white woman of her status had crossed every forbidden boundary into the private space of an enslaved teenager. One wrong move, one whispered word, and his life would end. The Ashford plantation, with its grand columns and sprawling cotton fields worked by over sixty enslaved people...