Elderly slaves contributed substantially to the creation and perpetuation of the unique African American culture and antebellum plantation society in the South. Interwoven with this major argument are two subthemes. One centers on the fact that by the late antebellum period elderly slaves were some of the chief transmitters of Africanism; the other focuses on how gender based distinctions of the elderly became blurred. Although the roles of the elderly often changed, elderly slaves contrib...

New York Times Bestseller: A "fascinating portrait" of one of the men enslaved by James and Dolley Madison, and his journey toward freedom ( Publishers Weekly).Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once he was finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoveri...

The essential, “richly researched”* biography of Harriet Tubman, revealing a complex woman who “led a remarkable life, one that her race, her sex, and her origins make all the more extraordinary” (*The New York Times Book Review).Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. Now, in this magnificent biography, hist...

A National Book Award FinalistWinner of the Frederick Douglass Book PrizeA startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s ...

From Midnight to Dawn presents compelling portraits of the men and women who established the Underground Railroad and traveled it to find new lives in Canada. Evoking the turmoil and controversies of the time, Tobin illuminates the historic events that forever connected American and Canadian history by giving us the true stories behind well-known figures such as Harriet Tubman and John Brown. She also profiles lesser-known but equally heroic figures such as Mary Ann Shadd, who bec...

The largest mass escape of fugitive slaves in American history is thrillingly chronicled in this "readable . . . valuable account" ( Kirkus).On the evening of April 15, 1848, nearly eighty enslaved Americans attempted one of history's most audacious escapes. Setting sail from Washington, D.C., on a schooner named the Pearl, the fugitives began a daring 225-mile journey to freedom in the North—and put in motion a furiously fought battle over slavery...

"Well written, moving . . . stimulating," this account of racially unified abolitionism "could provide the occasion for a constructive national conversation" ( New York Times).The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, ...

This pioneering study of the much-mythologized Southern belle offers the first serious look at the lives of white women and their harsh and restricted place in the slave society before the Civil War. Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of hundreds of planter wives and daughters, Clinton sets before us in vivid detail the daily life of the plantation mistress and her ambiguous intermediary position in the hierarchy between slave and master."The Plantation Mistress challenge...

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox t...

Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold tales of ordinary men and women who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to be together**—**and defy a system that categorized blacks not only as servants, but as property.In the true love stories of Forbidden Fruit, you will meet sixteen couples who fought for love—love between slaves, between slaves and masters, and between slaves and...

The newly discovered slave narratives of John Washington and Wallace Turnage—and their harrowing and empowering journey to emancipation.Slave narratives, among the most powerful records of our past, are extremely rare, with only fifty-five surviving post-Civil War. This book is a major new addition to this imperative part of American history—the firsthand accounts of two slaves, John Washington and Wallace Turnage, who through a combination of int...

In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Isaac Brown, a slave, was accused of the attempted murder of a prominent plantation owner, despite there being no evidence of his guilt. Brown, after enduring two brutal floggings, was shipped to a New Orleans slave pen. From there the resourceful Brown was able to make a daring escape to Philadelphia in the free state of Pennsylvania. His biggest error was writing a note informing his free wife and eleven children in Maryland of his whereabouts. The...