"Moments after Lisbeth is born, she's taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father. As she...

"No war can be fought with clean hands. Not even the ones waged for the right reasons. Not even the ones you win. Tisaanah bargained away her own freedom to save those she left behind in slavery. Now, bound by her blood pact, she must fight the Orders' war -- and Max is determined to protect her at all costs. But when a betrayal tears apart Ara, Max and Tisaanah are pushed into an even bloodier conflict. Tisaanah must gamble with Reshaye's power...

"In a time of division, we can have no better prophetic voice to frame today's discussions of justice and freedom than a one-legged fugitive slave who came to a Capitol without a Dome to tell how the Constitution could be made more perfect, in the name of God." -from a letter sent by the President of the Presbyterian Historical Society to the President of the Maryland State Senate In February 1865, just days after the adoption of the Thirteenth...

We think of the American Revolution as the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population-African Americans would still be bound in slavery for nearly another century. Drawing on first-person accounts and primary sources, Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink what we know about the Revolutionary War, to realize that while white Americans were fighting for...

Stories of the runaway slaves who left their spirits behind. "An easy read and an odd collection of tales of murders, mayhem, madness, and sadness." -Folklore Before the Civil War, a network of secret routes and safe houses crisscrossed the Midwest to help African Americans travel north to escape slavery. Although many slaves were able to escape to the safety of Canada, others met untimely deaths on the treacherous journey-and some of these unfortunates...