Showing results by narrator "Hal Saunders" in All Categories

This work by James Williams is one of very few autobiographical texts by Caribbean slaves or former slaves. It became one of the most powerful abolitionist tools for ending the system of apprenticeship which had replaced slavery. Williams argues that apprenticeship worsened the conditions of Jamaican ex-slaves as former owners used the legal system against them. 

Two Years Before the Mast is an 1840 memoir by the author Richard Henry Dana. A Harvard graduate, he spent the years 1834 to 1836 as a sailor on a merchant ship on a voyage from Boston to California. The journey took them past Cape Horn on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet. Dana provides detailed descriptions of ship life and the technical aspects of sailing. A chapter on California and its inhabitants offers valuable historical insights on the state which was then a foreign land.

Nat Love, the son of enslaved parents, was born in 1854 on a plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee. In February 1869, Love left Tennessee and found work as a cowboy, first in the Texas panhandle, then in Arizona. Love's story, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, was published in 1907, and it is considered the only full-length autobiography by an African-American cowhand.

Ibrahima Abdul Rahman or Abd al-Rahmana was born around 1762 in the African kingdom of Timbuktu, a region now part of Mali. At the age of 26, he was captured in an ambush, enslaved, and eventually transported to Mississippi, where he became a field worker on a cotton plantation. The manumission of Ibrahima and his wife Isabella was obtained prior to the publication of this 1828 work.

Jesse James was a guerrilla during the Civil War, and afterwards set out on a criminal career that lasted more than a decade. This extensive biography discusses every one of the robberies and acts of violence that the legendary outlaw and his gang perpetrated.

The biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was compiled by the abolitionist, Samuel Moore. Born in West Africa (now Benin) around 1830, Baquaqua was sold as a slave and lived in Brazil, Haiti, Canada, and the US where he escaped from slavery in New York City. He also visited England, but it is not known whether he realized his dream of returning to Africa.

Dr. Joseph Elias Hayne (1848-1911) was a physician and minister of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. He was one of a number of early black writers who challenged white racist theories that demeaned people of African origin. In his book The Negro in Sacred History (1887), he sought to refute all prejudices against black people by tracing the descendants of the biblical Ham with reference to archaeological and historical scholarship. Hayne argued that Ham was Noah’s favorite son and identified the Mediterranean deity Jupiter Ammon as a representative figure of Ham. 

The Rough Riders was the nickname given to the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War. Following the sinking of the USS Maine, volunteers were called up to assist in the war efforts. The Rough Riders are best remembered for their charge up San Juan Hill, east of Santiago de Cuba, on July 1, 1898. Soon after, the Spanish fleet left Cuba, and within weeks, the war ended. Theodore Roosevelt's The Rough Riders is a detailed memoir by the future president of the United States of the experiences of the Volunteer Cavalry.

The Blind African Slave is the life story of Jeffrey Brace (né Boyrereau Brinch), who was born in West Africa around 1742. He was captured by slave traders, transported to Barbados, and sold to an owner in New England. After gaining his freedom, Brace became a well-respected abolitionist. 

A History of the Amistad Captives was written and published by John Warner Barber in 1840. The Amistad was a Spanish slave ship on which the slaves revolted and eventually reached the United States. This insightful document sheds light on the Amistad incident and its participants, the complex legal issues around the transatlantic slave trade, and the lives of the captured Africans who finally regained their freedom.

William Henry (Harrison) Heard (1850-1937) was born into slavery and became a clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He served as United States Ambassador to Liberia from 1895 through 1898. His autobiography contains a chapter on men who had influenced his life, and a poem on his life by Ephraim Tyler.

The first part of Johnson's work deals with his life as a slave in Virginia. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, he gained his freedom and left Virginia for New York, and eventually Africa. The main theme of the book revolves around his missionary effort on the African continent.

John Jea was born in 1773 near Calabar in the Bight of Biafra and was sold into slavery in New York City. After learning to read the Bible, he was freed and eventually undertook journeys to South America and Europe. His autobiography included poetry. 

Edward Bellamy was an American socialist and author who had a penchant for utopian thinking and a passion for discussing a better world and the way in which can build one. Nowhere in Bellamy’s work is this more evident that in The New Nation. First published in 1981, The New Nation is an inspiring and beautifully crafted piece of writing that is at one political and emotionally driven. Bellamy writes of the sheer necessity to build a new nation or remodel the old one in a completely new way for the benefit of the people.