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A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation

David W. BlightJanuary 15, 2009

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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 intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, reached the protection of the occupying Union troops and found emancipation.

In A Slave No More, David W. Blight enriches the authentic narrative texts of these two young men using a wealth of genealogical information, handed down through family and friends. Blight has reconstructed their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their struggle to stable lives among the black working class in the north, where they reunited their families.

In the previously unpublished manuscripts of Turnage and Washington, we find history at its most intimate, portals that offer a startling new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to liberty. Here are the untold stories of two extraordinary men whose stories, once thought lost, now take their place at the heart of the American experience—as Blight rightfully calls them, “heroes of a war within the war.”

“These powerful memoirs reveal poignant, heroic, painful and inspiring lives.”—Publishers Weekly

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About the author

DAVID W. BLIGHT is the director of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and a professor of American history. His books include Race and Reunion, which won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Additional Information

Publisher

HMH

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Published on

Jan 15, 2009

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Pages

320

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ISBN

9780156035484

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Features

Flowing text, Original pages

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Best For

Web, Tablet, Phone, eReader

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Language

English

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Genres

Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / General

History / United States / 19th Century

History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877)

History / United States / General

History / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)

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