《Two American Slavery Documents》 - 免费有声读物

Two American Slavery Documents brings together two short nineteenth-century texts that show slavery from different angles: a personal memoir by a man who lived through it, and a campaigning pamphlet written to persuade Northern voters.

The first and longer piece is Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, first published in 1864. Mars was born in Connecticut in 1790, at a time when slavery was still legal there and was being ended only gradually. He describes his childhood in bondage, his family's flight into the woods to avoid being sold to the South, his passage between different masters, and his eventual freedom as a young man. He later worked in Hartford, where he helped found a church, before moving to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His account reminds readers that slavery was not only a Southern institution. The second piece is Facts for the People of the Free States, a tract issued in New York in the 1840s by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which sets out evidence and arguments meant to stir Northern opposition to slavery and its political power.

Together they offer a compact introduction to both lived experience and organised abolitionism. The collection suits readers of African American history, slave narratives, New England history and the antislavery movement, as well as students looking for primary sources.