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The
Blind African Slave
Or
Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace
Jeffrey Brace as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq.
Edited and with an introduction by Kari J. Winter
Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography
"It
is my anxious wish that this simple narrative may be the means
of opening the hearts of those who hold slaves and move them
to consent to give them the freedom which . . . all mankind have
an equal right to possess."—Jeffrey Brace,
from The Blind African Slave
Born in West Africa around 1742, Jeffrey Brace was captured
by slave traders at sixteen and shipped to Barbados, where he
was sold. After fighting as an enslaved sailor in the Seven Years
War, Brace was taken to Connecticut and sold again. Brace later
enlisted in the Continental Army in hopes of winning his manumission.
After military service, he was honorably discharged and was freed
from slavery. In 1784, he moved to Vermont, the first state to
make slavery illegal. There he married, bought a farm, and raised
a family. Although literate, he was blind when he narrated his
life story to an antislavery lawyer, Benjamin Prentiss. Brace
died in 1827, a well-respected abolitionist.
In this first new edition since 1810, Kari J. Winter supplements
our knowledge of Brace's life and times with original documents
and new material.
Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography
William L. Andrews, Series Editor
Kari
J. Winter
is associate professor of American studies at the State University
of New York at Buffalo. She is the author of Subjects of Slavery,
Agents of Change.
For more information contact
our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
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December 2004
LC: 2004007741 E
184 pp. 6 x 9
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