A Slave No More, David W. Blight
A Slave No More, David W. Blight
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A Slave No More
Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation

Author: David W. Blight

Narrator: Arthur Morey, Dominic Hoffman

Unabridged: 9 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/06/2007


Synopsis

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped North, and both left us remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends these narratives tell gripping stories of escape.

Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, historian David W. Blight has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods as sons of white slaveholders and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In A SLAVE NO MORE, the untold stories of two ordinary men take their place at the heart of the American experience.

About David W. Blight

David W. Blight is class of 1954 professor of history at Yale University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by robin on February 07, 2025

Two Narratives Of Emancipation Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are among a handful of former slaves in the Old South who wrote famous narratives of their lives in slavery and their ultimate escape to freedom. It is a rare and important event to find additional first-person narratives that docum......more

Goodreads review by Maya on October 20, 2008

I heard an interview of David Blight on Fresh Air and knew right away that I had to read this book. These two narratives are amazing. Each man was a slave who escaped to freedom during the civil war and then later wrote the story of his escape. And each story was protected, but hidden, for almost a......more

Goodreads review by Becky on June 03, 2019

Compelling and important in so many ways. I was especially impressed with Turnage’s vivid description of his many escape attempts, including the final escape just after being whipped for attempting to escape. There are fools who imagine that slaves were content with their lot or that slaves had dece......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on July 06, 2017

If the editor of this book would have been less skillful at framing the slave narratives included here, this could have been a much less enjoyable work, but fortunately for any reader of this book, this is a compelling narrative placed superbly in context.  As someone who is very familiar with books......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on May 06, 2024

To, after many trials, gain freedom fro m slavery is as powerful a story as I can imagine. Two of these stories, told first hand, make this an outstanding book.......more