The Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen was a pioneering figure in early nineteenth-century abolitionism and African American literature. A highly respected leader in the AME Zion Church, Rev. Loguen was popularly known as the “Underground Railroad King” in Syracuse, where he helped over 1,500 fugitives escape from slavery. With a charismatic and often controversial style, Loguen lectured alongside Frederick Douglass and worked closely with well-known abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, William Wells Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison, among others. Originally published in 1859, The Rev. J. W. Loguen chronicles the remarkable life of a tireless young man and a passionate activist. The narrative recounts Loguen’s early life in slavery, his escape to the North, and his successful career as a minister and abolitionist in New York and Canada. Given the text’s third-person narration and novelistic style, scholars have long debated its authorship. In this edition, Williamson uncovers new research to support Loguen as the author, providing essential biographical information and buttressing the significance of his life and writing. The Rev. J. W. Loguen represents a fascinating literary hybrid, an experiment in voice and style that enlarges our understanding of the slave narrative.

This volume contains the biography of Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen from his infancy and childhood, to his time spent in a Southern prison, through the wilderness and Canada, and back to the United States again, where he fought to end slavery.

A new interpretation of the Underground Railroad that places violence at the center of the story.

Examines the impact fugitive slaves had on the Fugitive Slave Law and the coming of the American Civil War.

North Star Country is the story of the remarkable transformation of Upstate New York's famous 'Burned-over District;' where the flames of religious revival sparked an abolitionist movement that eventually burst into the conflagration of the Civil War. Milton C. Sernett details the regional presence of African Americans from the pre-Revolutionary War era through the Civil War, both as champions of liberty and as beneficiaries of a humanitarian spirit generated from evangelical impulses. He includes in his narrative the struggles of great abolitionists—among them Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Beriah Green, Jermain Loguen, and Samuel May—and of many lesser-known characters who rescued fugitives from slave hunters, maintained safe houses along the Underground Railroad, and otherwise furthered the cause of freedom both regionally and in the nation as a whole. Sernett concludes with a compelling examination of the moral choices made during the Civil War by upstate New Yorkers—both black and white—and of the post-Appomattox campaign to secure freedom for the newly emancipated.

Excerpt from The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman: A Narrative of Real Life Again. For obvious reasons, we have not always used real names when writing of real persons for we would not involve living friends, or their families, for their good deeds. We refer now to Mr. Loguen's life in Tennessee, not to his life in New York, or Canada. In Tennessee, slavery rules the tongue, the press, and the pen. In New York and Canada, these are given to free judgment and discretion. At the north, men are answerable for such judgment and discretion to the law only. At the south, they are amenable to an over grown monster that devours alike law and humanity. At the south, we give Mr. Loguen's connection with slavery, and therefore conceal names. At the north, we give his connection with liberty, and therefore give names of friends and enemies alike. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.