Rambles of a runaway from southern slavery

Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery tells of anextraordinary life in and out of slavery in the United States and Canada.

Born Elijah Turner in theVirginia Tidewater, circa 1810, the author eventually procured freedom papers from a man heresembled and took the man's name, Henry Goings.

His life story takes us on an epic journey,traveling from his Virginia birthplace through the cotton kingdom of the Lower South, and upon hisescape from slavery, through Tennessee and Kentucky, then on to the Great Lakes region of the Northand to Canada.

His Rambles show that slaves were found not only in fields butalso on the nation's roads and rivers, perpetually in motion in massive coffles or as solitaryrunaways.A freedom narrative as well as a slave narrative, this compact yetdetailed book illustrates many important developments in antebellum America, such as thelarge-scale forced migration of enslaved people from long-established slave societies in theeastern United States to new settlements on the cotton frontier, the political-economicprocesses that framed that migration, and the accompanying human anguish.

Goings's life andreflections serve as important primary documents of African American life and of American nationalexpansion, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

This edition features an informative and insightfulintroduction by Calvin Schermerhorn.