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A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation Audiobook
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(3.09) - 162 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
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.
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"My son gave me this book for Christmas. It really gave me a better understanding of the freeing of slaves during the Civil War. This book gives two accounts actually written by slaves who escaped their masters during the Civil War. Fascinating reading."
— Carolyne (5 out of 5 stars)
A Slave No More Listener Reviews
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" Moving accounts of two men who fled slavery to pursue their own, hard-won happiness. The stories are vividly told, and, as a native Washingtonian, I particularly appreciated the depiction of Washington, D. C. just after the Civil War. "
— Leigh, 2/20/2014 -
" Got what I wanted from it by scanning it! "
— Brenda, 1/31/2014 -
" Liked the narratives themselves better than the historical review of them, but still an interesting book. Very cool contrast between the two men. "
— Caitlin, 1/16/2014 -
" Excellent narratives, from a well-respected & maligned) professor. Less political & more human interest from a horrid period of history "
— Stefan, 11/10/2013 -
" I have read many of the WPA slave narratives in the past. This book however gives a complete profile of two men both slaves with different experiences who want to be free. Excellent book "
— Nona, 11/10/2013 -
" Blight gives a good analysis of the two found texts from extraordinary men who escaped slavery (one after five attempts) in 1862 and 1864. Blight's background of the times and how these men lived their lives in freedom is a nice counterpoint to the way each man tells his own story. "
— Anne, 10/22/2013 -
" The narratives were incredible. The monograph was competent but unexciting, except for the assertion (I'm paraphrasing) that contrary to the assertion of some modern apologists, the war really was about slavery. "
— Deb, 10/16/2013 -
" Fascinating gripping narratives that speak to the legacy of slavery and the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction "
— Sam, 7/2/2013 -
" If you like Civil War history, a pretty cool account. Probably could have been trimmed down quite a bit. "
— Chris, 10/26/2012 -
" Amazing! The first-hand recollections buttressed with known historical facts of the day paints a new appreciation for the difficult...impossible...individual journey from slavery to freedom. "
— Kevin, 9/29/2012 -
" Great book beautiful photos very interesting "
— Shannon, 5/11/2012 -
" I really struggled to read this- yet was so interested in the topic. very difficult read- choppy- "
— Marjorie, 11/22/2010 -
" A well-researched work that places two first-person narratives within a larger historical context. "
— Barrett, 8/17/2010 -
" OK. It did give some insight into the actual lives of slaves around the Civil War time and after. "
— Kevin, 9/2/2009 -
" Ok so i thought this was a book if letters and not actually historical facts. I liked the book and thought it was interesting but i was a little disappointed that it wasnt directly from the two main people. I would suggest it to anyone that i think is interested but will not be reading it again. "
— Tiffany, 9/1/2008 -
" I confess--I skipped most of the intro materials and just read the slave narratives. Maybe a bad choice but it was what interested me most. The slave narratives were fascinating and horrifying. Well worth the time. "
— Jane, 5/18/2008
About David W. Blight
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. Among his books is Race and Reunion, which won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
About the Narrators
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.
Dominic Hoffman, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice. He is a Los Angeles–based actor of stage, screen, and television. He has appeared in such television shows as The Shield, NYPD Blue, and The Jamie Foxx Show. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as well as the American Conservatory Theater.