The Blind African Slave: Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) - Tapa dura

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.