[...] when I trawled for their names on the 1860 census I came up empty. No enslaved African American was named on an antebellum federal census; they were counted, eighty to a page, and the count was made, by 1860 at least, by supplying the rough age, sex, and color of the individual, either black or mulatto. Prior to the search, it had made sense to me that three generations back I might face a wall of silence. But when I discovered the simple facts, witnessed the script on the census ledger, and interpreted the hash marks in a column, the historical record took on another kind of life altogether. It seemed—well, the word I would use is close: uncomfortably present, not in the past, not safely tucked away at all.