LARGE PRINT EDITIONTHE Author, thinking an account of his life and experience would be of service to persons into whose hands it might fall, has, by the advice of some of his friends, come to the conclusion to narrate, as correctly as possible, things that he encountered and that came under his notice during a period of some forty-five years. He hopes, after a perusal of his first attempt, the reader will pardon him for any errors which may have been committed; and if I can only think that any good may have grown out of my adventures, I shall then consider that I have commenced to answer the end I and all human beings were created for--having lived that the world may be bettered by me.

My name is James Williams. I was born in 1825 in Elkton, Maryland. My mother was a slave, so I was a slave. I was born in the house of William Hollingsworth, my master. When I was ten years old I was a house-boy. I had to stand at the table and brush off the flies while the guests were dining. My master and others would be talking about the slaves and what they could get for them. One of the en turned his head and said, “Tom, you must never run away. Bad boys are the only ones that run away. When their master gets them he will sell them to Georgia where they will bore holes in your ears and plow you like a horse.” They said this to scare me, thinking I would believe them. Seeing the difference between freedom and slavery, I made up my mind that when I was old enough I would run away. Read this true story of how James Williams escaped from slavery alone, when he was just a boy of thirteen. Ages 7 to 10. Educational Versions include exercises designed to meet Common Core standards. LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Many books are appropriate for hi-lo readers. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

The American Anti-Slavery Society originally published Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave in 1838 to much fanfare, describing it as a rare slave autobiography. Soon thereafter, however, southerners challenged the authenticity of the work and the society retracted it. Abolitionists at the time were unable to defend the book; and, until now, historians could not verify Williams's identity or find the Alabama slave owners he named in the book. As a result, most scholars characterized the author as a fraud, perhaps never even a slave, or at least not under the circumstances described in the book. In this annotated edition of Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, Hank Trent provides newly discovered biographical information about the true author of the book -- an African American man enslaved in Alabama and Virginia. Trent identifies Williams's owners in those states as well as in Maryland and Louisiana. He explains how Williams escaped from slavery and then altered his life story to throw investigators off his track. Through meticulous and extensive research, Trent also reveals unknown details of James Williams's real life, drawing upon runaway ads, court cases, census records, and estate inventories never before linked to him or to the narrative. In the end, Trent proves that the author of the book was truly an enslaved man, albeit one who wrote a romanticized, fictionalized story based on his real life, which proved even more complex and remarkable than the story he told.

"Life and Adventures of James Williams, a Fugitive Slave" is a 1873 account by American slave James Williams, describing his early life, abuse, and eventual escape to New York City. The first slave narrative published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, today the story is commonly remembered as fraudulent due to contemporary Southern newspaper columnists' attacks on the narrative's veracity. The book was ghostwritten by John Greenleaf Whittier, a Quaker poet and abolitionist. Contents include: "An Introductory Excerpt by W. Mckinstry", "Preface", "When and Where Born", "Why I Ran Away", "First Contact with the Underground Railroad", "In the Riot Against the Killers", "Escape from Pursuers", "Raffling for Geese, and What Came of it", "Making Coffee out of Salt Water", etc. A powerful account of life as an African-American slave that will appeal to those interested in black history and literature. Read & Co. History is proudly republishing this classic slave narrative now in a brand new edition, complete with an introductory excerpt by W. Mckinstry.

Recollections of Slavery By A Runaway Slave The True Story of Sugar House, Charleston, South Carolina The Slave Torture House A Slave Narrative Serialized in The Emancipator in 1838 .....and then carried me to the Sugar House in Charleston. As soon as we got there they made me strip off all my clothes, and searched me to see if I had anything hid. They found nothing but a knife. After that they drove me into the yard where I staid till night. As soon as master's father, Mordecai Cohen, heard that I was caught, he sent word to his son, and the next morning master came. He said "well, you staid in the woods as long as you could, now which will you do,--stay here, or go home?" I told him I did'nt know. Then he said if I would not go home willingly I might stay there two or three months. He said "Mr. Wolf, give this fellow fifty lashes and put him on the tread mill. I'm going North, and shall not be back till July, and you may keep him till that time." When they had got me fixed in the rope good, and the cap on my face, they called Mr. Jim Wolf, and told him they had me ready. He came and stood till they had done whipping me. One drew me up tight by the rope and the other whipped, and Wolf felt of my skin to tell when it was tight enough. They whipped till he stamped. Then they rubbed brine in, and put on my old clothes which were torn into rags while I was in the swamp, and put me into a cell. The cells are little narrow rooms about five feet wide, with a little hole up high to let in air. I was kept in the cell till next day, when they put me on the tread mill, and kept me there three days, and then back in the cell for three days. And then I was whipped and put on the tread mill again, and they did so with me for a fortnight, just as Cohen had directed. He told them to whip me twice a week till they had given me two hundred lashes. My back, when they went to whip me, would be full of scabs, and they whipped them off till I bled so that my clothes were all wet. Many a night I have laid up there in the Sugar House and scratched them off by the handful. There was a little girl, named Margaret, that one day did not work to suit the overseer, and he lashed her with his cow-skin. She was about seven years old. As soon as he had gone she ran away to go to her mother, who was at work on the turnpike road, digging ditches and filling up ruts made by the wagons. She had to go through a swamp, and tried to cross the creek in the middle of the swamp, the way she saw her mother go every night. It had rained a great deal for several days, and the creek was 15 or 16 feet wide, and deep enough for horses to swim it. When night came she did not come back, and her mother had not seen her. The overseer cared very little about it, for she was only a child and not worth a great deal. Her mother and the rest of the hands hunted after her that night with pine torches, and the next night after they had done work, and every night for a week, and two Sundays all day. They would not let us hunt in the day time any other day. Her mother mourned a good deal about her, when she was in the camp among the people, but dared not let the overseer know it, because he would whip her. In about two weeks the water had dried up a good deal, and then a white man came in and said that "somebody's little nigger was dead down in the brook." We thought it must be Margaret, and afterwards went down and found her. She had fallen from the log-bridge into the water. Something had eat all her flesh off, and the only way we knew her was by her dress.