American Slavery As It Is: Selections from the Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses

by Theodore Dwight Weld (Editor)

The stories of hundreds of African-Americans who lived in bondage are preserved in this powerful 1839 chronicle. Compiled by a prominent abolitionist, the accounts include personal narratives from freed slaves as well as testimonials from active and former slave owners, presenting a condemnation of slavery from both those who experienced it and those who perpetuated it. Detailing the overall conditions of slaves across multiple states and several years, the book includes information on their diet, clothing, housing, and working hours as well as their punishments and suffering.
Connecticut farmer-turned-abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld (1803–1895) was a central leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society and traveled the country lecturing against slavery. Weld took great pains to document the trustworthiness of contributors to American Slavery so that there could be no doubt as to its authenticity. A major influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book sold 100,000 copies in its first year of publication and remains a valuable historical testament. This edited selection presents these powerful first-person accounts to a new generation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

From Wikipedia: Theodore Dwight Weld (November 23, 1803 – February 3, 1895) was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 to 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best known for his co-authorship of the authoritative compendium American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, published in 1839. Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Weld's text; the latter is regarded as second only to the former in its influence on the antislavery movement. Weld remained dedicated to the abolitionist movement until slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.[1]

According to Lyman Beecher, the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Weld was "as eloquent as an angel, and as powerful as thunder."[2]: 323  His words were "logic on fire".[3]

In 1950, Weld was described as being "totally unknown to most Americans".[4]: v 

Reviews

[Gary]

A word of explanation on why I gave this a four stars. It is not a well written book. It is hard reading and very dated. But it is a book which causes one to sharpen their image of the American past, particularly pre-Civil War. It also makes one understand a bit more of some parts of the South today. This book was written in 1839 as an anti-slavery tact, 13 years before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published. It is said it was the most influential abolitionist book behind Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I found this book through a note from Susan Monk Kidd in her book The Invention of Wings. In Kidd's book she noted that the Angelina and Sarah Grimke were from her home town and she did not know about it. From there, she found an American Anti-Slavery Society tract called American Slavery: As It Is. Having previously read Fredrick Douglas' autobiography earlier, I was wondering how this book matched up and how Kidd's book matched with American Slavery. If anything, Douglas' book is rather tame compared to Weld's account.

This is not light reading. As one person said, she could not rate the book because it is not entertainment reading. She is right, it was an indictment in 1839 about the whole slavery system. As such, it is 250+ pages of painful reading of one atrocity after another done to Negros both slaves and free.

I will say I had a tendency to skip some paragraphs as there is a lot of repetition of similar acts of torture. But this book was written to document how slavery had inflicted evil on the South. Not only on negros, but on white. The writings show that the people of the South considered the negros as sub-human. They would inflict punishments on them that not even their animals would have been subject to. Not only are the negros degraded, but so is the whole culture. This book indirectly shows how the whites resorted to a leve of brutality which we more associate with barbarians than the refined culture of the South.

As a book, it is repetitive. It relies on people's accounts rather than the authors narrative to get their points across. As a propaganda tool, an instructional instrument, it opened my eyes to how truly barbaric the treatment of slaves in the South was. This is a must read for anybody who wants to understand the nature of slavery. Warning, this is a very graphic book, even for our times.

FOr more on my review, please see my blog.

[Andrea]

I find that I cannot rate this book. It's not something you read for entertainment purposes. It would just seem wrong. Thought provoking, and it silences you to your soul.

[Damon]

An irrefutable condemnation of slavery. The cruelty in these pages are difficult to read but we do The slaves and their suffering disservice to avoid their stories.

[Matt]

This book is a historical artifact and that’s how I judge it. Published in 1839, it apparently had a galvanizing affect on the American abolition movement by chronicling through eye witness accounts and advertisements run in local newspapers (notices of sales and runaways) of the atrocious treatment of enslaved people in America in the 1830s. Both horrific and tedious at times, it lays waste to the argument that American slavery was in any way beneficent, apparently a common argument pre-1865 and one that surfaces from time to time now. It makes clear what a Holocaust American slavery was.

[Ron Stafford]

Compelling - so thought provoking

[Marta E C R]

This is a very impressive book, put out by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and edited by Theodore Weld, husband of abolitionist/feminist Angelina Grimke Weld. The brutality and cruelty which were perpetrated on slaves is something every American needs to understand, and this book presents them in stark truth through multiple witnesses as well as newspaper advertisements placed by slaveholders for runaway slaves. It is not easy to read, but it is completely wrong to ignore this brutal history because of one's own discomfort with these realities.

[Jfp]

See “Gary’s” 4* review for the book. He is spot on.

This book is not an easy read. As noted in the above referenced review it is very repetitive and I, too, skimmed parts that told the same tragic story through the experiences of many witnesses. These stories are a part of our history that we should never forget.

[Lisa Rogers]

Although it is Theodore Weld whose name appears on the book’s slender spine, it was his wife and sister who slaved away for weeks gleaning data from over 10,000 sources to compile for this book. Kudos to Weld as well as wife Angelina Grimke Weld and sister Sarah Grimke. This book was an invaluable resource for Harriet Beecher Stowe in writing the Book of the Century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

[Kevin]

As mentioned in PBS American Experience: The Abolitionists.