The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves

Rating:
Summary: Unusual reprint of 1850s Antislavery book
Review: I was pleased to find this book, which is a reprint of a book published by the Canadian Anti-slavery Society in 1856. Benjamin Drew, the author, was an abolitionist and historian who recorded the stories of people arriving in Canada fleeing slavery in the U.S. One narrative begins "I have been in Canada two days..." The narratives are particularly valuable because they were gathered right at the time of (or shortly after) individuals or families reached freedom in Canada.

US slave narratives gathered in the 1930s were interviews done with elderly people who had been enslaved as children. their recollections are much more distant and, sometimes, sanitized by the interviewers.
Drew's interviews include some corrected grammar but seem to be relatively literal. This is a valuable resource for anyone studying slavery, abolitionism or the underground railroad.
Other resources include: Memoirs of Levi Coffin, Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (reprint available) and "The Underground Railroad" by historian Charles Blockson,
also, appropriate for younger readers, "Slavery Time When I Was Chillun'" by Belinda Hurmence (some of those 1930s era interviews).

Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: This is just as the title implies: narratives of fugitive slaves, in this case slaves who escaped to freedom in Canada. This is powerful stuff that hits on many levels, one simply being that (rarely mentioned in U.S. history books or classes) Canada was a great place of refuge from the horrors that had entrapped slaves in the United States.

In this book we get to hear, in their own voices, fugitive slaves, many whom had been free--but still fugitive-- for only a matter of weeks at the time their stories were recorded. They tell what their lives were like as a slave, and what it felt like to escape from that burden.

The narratives are in various lengths, but all powerful, as the richness of these former slaves' humanity comes forth and the reader comes away thinking, "hey, these people sound just like you and me--except they had to suffer years of a living hell, being the property of others, in many cases being treated worse than a mongrel dog." We also hear from slaves whose masters were less cruel, but not so benevolent that their slaves did not wish to escape.

The bottom line is there is plenty of of first-hand information here that reveals the hearts and minds of recently escaped slaves, details of their lives, and from that we are reminded of both the evil that had entrapped them, and the great longing for freedom that helped them escape from those chains.

This book helps bring home the reality of slavery, something so horrible and wrong, but nevertheless something many Americans were more than eager to enforce less than 150 years ago. There is something in the narratives of these former slaves that brings forth the reality of slavery in ways that are rarely touched upon in school text books. We need books like this to remind us of the evil that can arise so easily in people when given the chance to command power over others. As I said, these narratives are from less than 150 years ago--not long enough ago for all that evil to have completely evaporated.

Can you imagine what is was like to be a slave in the United States? Few of us really can, even if we think we can. But this book makes it a little easier--and that's a good thing. Great book.