Harriet A. Jacobs escaped from enslavement in North Carolina in 1835, making her way to Philadelphia and then to New York. She wrote this memoir of her experience in enslavement and escape from it in the 1850s while she was in New York. A company in Boston published the narrative in 1860.

Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and became one of America’s most famous abolitionist speakers. This passage comes from his autobiography, published in 1846. This book, in which Douglass described his experience in and escape from enslavement, reached a mass audience in the United States and abroad.