"Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism...

Presents the life of the man who escaped slavery in Maryland to become a speaker and writer for abolition and the rights of African Americans and women, focusing on his childhood and youth as a slave.

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...

Fleeing his violent master at the side of abolitionist John Brown at the height of the slavery debate in mid-nineteenth-century Kansas Territory, Henry pretends to be a girl to hide his identity throughout the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Chronicles the life of the abolitionist and his many roles, from former slave and orator to newspaperman, women's rights activist, diplomat, and memoirist.

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery, but became a free woman. Freedom meant so much to Sojourner, she used the power of speech to help end slavery.

In 1835, two Salisbury brothers journey to Washington City from Sandy Creek, New York, to promote their town. In Washington, they witness a slave being whipped. Mason Salisbury tries to intervene and is struck across the face with the whip. Mason becomes an ardent abolitionist. In 1861, his son, Moreau, is at seminary when Ft. Sumter is fired upon, beginning the Civil War. Moreau cannot reconcile the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," with killing,...

A history of the Underground Railroad offers insight into the role played by westward expansion, the spiritual beliefs that motivated each side of the conflict, and the efforts of black and white citizens to save tens of thousands of lives.