Facing a seven-hour drive, I picked up this audiobook so that I wouldn’t have to listen to a business book for that long in one day. The author David Blight had won a Pulitzer Prize and is renowned for his annals of African-American history. I knew his writing to be eloquent and clear, and his observations of human nature, compassionate and acute. I had great hopes for this drive, and thankfully, with Blight’s erudite help, it passed very quickly. I was drawn into and moved by these self-written life stories of two self-emancipated slaves.

Self-written emancipation narratives are extremely rare. Though oral stories circulated in American culture after the Civil War, few were written down. Even fewer were written down by the formerly enslaved person themselves. These two narratives fit squarely in that category, grammatical errors and all. Only in recent decades, the public became aware of them. Blight artfully retells each of these stories for modern readers and then shares both stories in their original, unedited form.

Listening to this book is like peeling a vidalia onion, each step slightly tear-inducing yet commingled with a savory sweetness. Blight opens with an introduction and then tells their stories using scholarly knowledge to bring modern readers up to speed. Then, he shares broader historical information not in the original accounts, like what we know happened to them afterwards and how their lives fit into wider American history. Finally, the essential core is shared in the life stories in the self-emancipated heroes themselves, told in their own words. The entire product is moving and engrossing.

John Washington was enslaved in Virginia yet became literate as a city slave. After escaping, he ended up helping the Union army while fighting for his wife and children’s freedom. Wallace Turnage, enslaved in the fields of Alabama, tried to escape an impressive five times as a teenager before finally succeeding. Turnage’s tale became more exciting each time I heart it, and the final telling – in his own words – stirred my heart within. He overcame being hunted, whippings, hunger, daunting landscapes, and the waters of Mobile Bay in order to gain freedom. What better voice to tell of America’s deep meaning!

Since after the Civil War all the way to today, many white people have tried to sweep slavery’s unseemliness into a forgotten past. That’s unfortunate. Not only is that unjust for people still struggling with similar racist obstacles today, but it also lacks the depths of inspiration for all of us. People like John Washington and Wallace Turnage are inspiring human beings for what they overcame to treasure life’s freedoms. They just happened to be black slaves. They are proud emblems of America. During the upcoming Black History Month, they inspire me, a white man with plenty of privilege, to learn more about the people around me in America and to benefit from their stories, their courage, and their heart. ( )

In 2003, two separate, unconnected manuscripts were found, both featuring the personal memoirs of a slave who escaped to freedom during the Civil War and later settled in the North. One was by a man called John Washington, who joined up with the Union army when it reached Fredericksburg (his white masters having all run off and hid). The other is by one Wallace Turnage who, as a teenager, ran away no fewer than five times to escape beatings, finally achieving success on the fifth attempt.

Both are included in this book... although not until the end. First, historian David Blight starts off by telling us the story of how the manuscripts came to light, then goes through the main events of each narrative, providing historical context for everything. He also, as much as is possible, traces the later histories of the two men and their families, and describes the times and places they lived in after the war. Then he concludes with some more general historical details about the emancipation of the slaves and its immediate consequences. After all that, I was starting to get a little tired of listening to Blight and eager to finally hear these two men speak for themselves. But all of that background was interesting, and ultimately very useful for properly understanding and appreciating these personal narratives.

The narratives themselves are included unedited, complete with the idiosyncratic spelling and grammar of people who had no access to formal education. (Both of these men, it seems, essentially taught themselves to read and write, with the haphazard help of whoever they could enlist to teach them. So, far from disparaging their spelling, I'm deeply impressed that they managed to attain literacy at all.) They're predictably fascinating pieces of writing, in that they provide a very human, very personal glimpse into a particularly awful, and particularly important, bit of American history. But they're also surprisingly engaging stories. Turnage describes his as an account of his "adventures and persecutions," and it is indeed full of both of those things. Washington's story is a bit more sedate, but features a wonderfully sly sense of humor that makes me think he must have been the kind of guy who the grandkids would actually ask to ramble on about his life for them.

It's definitely a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the Civil War or the history of slavery in America. Or for Americans in general, really, as we should all be aware of the presence of stories like this in our past. ( )

In 2006 two families approached Civil War historian David Blight with old manuscripts. They had been passed down from grandfather to granddaughter, from granddaughter to best friend for decades. Now they were donating them to a local historical society, who encouraged them to get the stories published. When Blight saw them, he realized he had two never-published chronicles of the long, hard journey to freedom of two African-American slaves. This book consists of those chronicles along with Blight's introduction explaining and contextualizing these narratives.

Slave narratives, writes Blight, are the foundational genre of African-American literature. Not a bad place to start. John Washington and Wallace Turnage are not artful or skilled storytellers, but through their to-the-pointness their amazing feats of escape show through. Both defected to Union soldiers during the war. Washington describes how popular he became in the Union camp after they discovered he had brought Confederate newspapers with him containing vital information. Turnage, a man of great luck and skill, ran away from his masters four times before finally succeeding. On his last try, he had to escape Mobile, Alabama to the camp of the Union soldiers surrounding the town. To get there he had to walk through snake-infested swamps and a Confederate camp, where they noticed him but didn't stop him, assuming he was a camp slave.

These mens' depictions of the brutality they witnessed as slaves was horrifying. Turnage spent his youth working at a slave dealer, where he would have witnessed daily the dividing of mother from daughter and husband from wife. Washington was separated from his mom at six, and spent most of his childhood as a house slave, taken from his family and separated from the company of other slaves. Both describe beatings, stripping of women, and vicious biting dogs. But these men were filled with great hope. To the chagrin of their overseers, their spirits had not been broken. When Washington came to the Union camp and was told that the Emancipation Proclamation had passed two days before, he knew it was the best day of his life. This strong spirit enabled him to survive during the hard days of establishing a post-slave life.

Blight's introduction was helpful at putting things in perspective. Washington and Turnage were only one of many slaves who escaped to enemy lines, often known as "contraband" in the Union. Since Confederates used slaves to build trenches and fortifications, Union generals realized that accepting these men not only gave them moral high ground but deprived the enemy of labor. The Emancipation Proclamation, while inspired by lofty constitutional ideals, was a practical document as well.

While I enjoyed this book, it left me with a sadness when comparing it to W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. Washington and Turnage end their narratives at their emancipation, but Blight's research was able to describe their post-war lives and descendants. Both men found that the dream of equality set before them became fainter and fainter in the midst of Jim Crow laws and Northern racism. And these men, in terms of education and opportunity, were the cream of the crop of African-American slaves. They were literate. I can only imagine how many hundreds of thousands of American slaves died with stories untold.

NOTE: As for the narrator. Different narrators were used for Blight's introduction and for the two slave narratives. I felt both were too slow, especially the narrator for the slave narratives, who used the slowest pace I've ever heard in an audiobook. I corrected that by listening at double speed. Other than that, the narration was quite good. ( )

As the Civil War was being waged, two slaves, John M. Washington and Wallace Turnage, seized the moment and escaped across Confederate lines and into the union army. Both men left narratives or autobiographies that were passed down through friends and family and only recently came to attention of historians. Blight, a foremost authority on emancipation and professor at Yale University, published them with no changes to grammar or spelling, adding a lengthy analysis that reveals how the narratives came to light, puts them in historical context, and fills in biographical gaps with genealogical information. An incredible amount of work went into filling in the gaps of their lives. ( )

A pretty good, but not great look at the short diaries of escaped slaves Wallace Turnage and John Washington. Their stories are interesting though not particularly well told (especially in the case of Wallace.) The earlier chapters by Blight are actually more interesting than the freed men's own narratives. ( )