The New Man: Twenty-Nine Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man.

'We doubt whether there is to be found in literature anything of its kind at once as authentic and as entertaining.' Washington Post

“There were masters of different dispositions and temperaments. Many owners treated their slaves so humanely that they never ran away, although they were sometimes punished; others allowed the overseer to treat their slaves with such brutality...”

H. C. Bruce was born into slavery on March 3rd, 1836, as far as he is able to tell. He subsequently spent twenty-nine years a Slave, twenty-nine years a Free Man – The subtitle to these personal recollections.

From 1841 Bruce begins with his formative years amidst slavery camps of varying owners from Virginia to Missouri, working in plantations and tobacco factories, for brick-makers and rail-splitters.

When Bruce finally finds love, his fiancée’s master opposes the marriage, concerned by his ability to read and write. Subsequently both risk life and limb to escape to Kansas and secure their freedom.

With a lucid, personal, authentic and unbiased narrative, Bruce illuminates the conditions he faced, the hardships and the joys from his life in bondage. Constantly contrasting the kindness and cruelties of slave-owners, Bruce also paints the fascinating complexities in relationships between slave and master.

“But what could we do? Nothing at all.”

Furthermore Bruce, in-hindsight, talks of the class disparity endemic across the whole of America and how the slave trade blind-sided the country towards broader issues of the poverty and education.

Every word of this narrative is shadowed by the spectre of the horrifying punishment, murder, malnourishment and mistreatment of himself and those around him under various hands. The attitudes of family, friends, slaves, masters, runaways and sympathisers are depicted with unflinching, heart-wrenching objectivity in this fascinating and insightful autobiography.

Henry Clay Bruce, brother of the first black U.S. Senator Blanche K. Bruce, was born into slavery in Virginia to parents owned by Lemuel Bruce in 1836. He was later sold to Missouri and fled to Kansas where he subsequently owned several businesses and served as an elected doorkeeper for the state senate. In 1881, Henry’s brother secured him a job at the post office and he and his family moved to Washington, D.C. This book was published in 1895 and he died in 1902.

For details of other books published by Albion Press go to the website at www.albionpress.co.uk.

Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.