Louis Hughes was born in Virginia (1832), but was sold (1844) in the Richmond slave market to a cotton planter and his wife who lived on the Mississippi River. Later, he traveled with them to their new home in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent time during the Civil War in Alabama. Hughes made five attempts to escape, alone and with his wife and friends, but he and his wife succeeded in finding freedom only after Emancipation. Eventually, after reuniting with several members of their family and seeking a livelihood in various Southern, Midwestern and Canadian cities (Memphis, Cincinnati, Hamilton, Windsor, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland), they settled in Milwaukee, where Hughes became a nurse, drawing on skills he had developed while treating the illnesses of his fellow slaves. Thirty Years a Slave provides a great deal of information about the complex relationships between slaves and masters, along with graphic accounts of the physical abuse slaves endured, and details about slave markets, slave religion, and the organization of plantation work. Hughes also remembers the desire for learning he felt when he was a slave and recalls the varied tasks he performed in his masters' households.