American Slavery As It Is

Published in 1839 and edited by abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, this work presents hundreds of primary-source accounts of the reality of slavery in the American South. The book's first section collects vivid first-person accounts by former slaves of their lives in slavery. In the second part, Weld offers page after page of stark quotations—some as short as a single sentence—from various Southern periodicals that illustrate in graphic detail the bondage, floggings, maimings and other horrors endured by slaves. Weld also presents and dissects various pro-slavery arguments. Distributed by the American Anti-Slavery Society, American Slavery As It Is was second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin for its impact on the anti-slavery movement in the United States.