This image is the cover for the book The Negro in the American Rebellion, His Heroism and His Fidelity, Classics To Go

The Negro in the American Rebellion, His Heroism and His Fidelity, Classics To Go

Excerpt: "I now undertake to write a history of the part which the colored men took in the great American Rebellion. Previous to entering upon that subject, however, I may be pardoned for bringing before the reader the condition of the blacks previous to the breaking out of the war. The Declaration of American Independence, made July 4, 1776, had scarcely been enunciated, and an organization of the government commenced, ere the people found themselves surrounded by new and trying difficulties, which, for a time, threatened to wreck the ship of state. The forty-five slaves landed on the banks of the James River, in the colony of Virginia, from the coast of Africa, in 1620, had multiplied to several thousands, and were influencing the political, social, and religious institution’s of the country. Brought into the colonies against their will; made the “hewers of wood and the drawers of water;” considered, in the light of law and public opinion, as mere chattels,—things to be bought and sold at the will of the owner; driven to their unrequited toil by unfeeling men, picked for the purpose from the lowest and most degraded of the uneducated whites, whose moral, social, and political degradation, by slavery, was equal to that of the slave,—the condition of the negro was indeed a sad one."

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown (c. 1814 – November 6, 1884) was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian in the United States. Born into slavery in Montgomery County, Kentucky, near the town of Mount Sterling, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 19. He settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working for abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time; it was later published in the United States.

OTB ebook