Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

2004: Lina Sparrow, an artist's daughter, is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. 1852: Josephine, a seventeen-year-old slave, tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. Lina's search to find a plaintiff for her case will introduce her to Josephine's story. Was she the real talent behind her mistress's now-famous...

While living on a Vermont poor farm during 1855 and 1856, Jip learns his identity and that of his mother and comes to understand how he arrived at this place.

Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine risked their lives helping thousands of men, women, and children escape from slavery in Kentucky and further south. This edited and abridged edition of Coffin's "Reminiscences" includes hundreds of dramatic stories told by the former slaves as they passed through his home, following the northern star to freedom.

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856 - a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces - when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town - along with Brown, who believes Henry to be a girl and his good-luck charm. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity to stay...

Chafed by the "sivilized" restrictions of his foster home, and weary of his drunkard father's brutality, Huck Finn fakes his own death and sets off on a raft down the Mississippi River. He is soon joined by Jim, an escaped slave. Together, they experience a series of rollicking adventures that have amused readers, young and old, for over a century.
The fugitives become close friends as they weather storms together aboard the raft and spend idyllic

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"No one knows where the term "Underground Railroad" came from--there were no trains or tracks, only abolitionist "conductors" who helped bring an estimated 100,000 slaves to freedom through elaborate routes that included "stations," safe houses where fugitives could rest before moving on, and a system of codes and signals used to identify friend from foe. Including real stories from the "Railroad," What Was the Underground Railroad? will capture young...

Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) is a historical novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Although her career peaked with the publication of abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe continued to work as a professional writer throughout her life. A tale of greed, betrayal, and rebellion, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp displays her impressive imaginative range and admirable moral outlook while illuminating aspects of early American...

"The fourth self-contained volume of The American Novels series tells the story of Samuel Long, who escapes slavery in Virginia by traveling the Underground Railroad to Walden Woods, where he encounters Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison, and other transcendentalists and abolitionists. While Long will experience his coming-of-age at Walden Pond, his hosts will receive a lesson on human dignity, culminating...

"In this retelling of an episode from Uncle Tom's Cabin, the slave Eliza Harris resolves to escape with her two-year-old son across the frozen Ohio River to prevent her master from selling the boy. Includes historical notes on Harriet Beecher Stowe, slavery in America, the Fugitive slave laws, and the Underground Railroad"--Title verso page.