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Breaking The Chains
Explores the many escape attempts slaves throughout the country made in order to break away, as well as the various battles fought by slaves against their captors in their struggle to be free. Reprint.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 13, 2021
This was good! Imagine that you're sitting in your car in 1990, and you're a history buff so you're thinking, "Lincoln freed the slaves. Good for him," and then you take this month's mail-order subscription cassette tape out of its huge package and put it in your tape player and learn that, actually, enslaved people resisted enslavement continuously from the day Europeans started meddling in Africa until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and beyond. Good job, William Loren Katz! The audio quality is a little shaky and this dates from the boring-voice era of audiobooks, but it's comprehensive, accessible, interesting, full of the stories of people who did things from work stoppages and poisonings all the way to a pregnant woman dressing up as an elderly gentleman and treating her husband like her manservant. I've heard about them before but would like to learn more. I would like to learn more about all the stories in this book. It draws heavily from the memoirs of enslaved people, along with newspaper accounts, letters, interviews, and other real time documents that we should all find and read. Katz also describes the bigger slave rebellions and the effect that the liberation of Haiti had on enslaved Americans. Good historical overview. Highly recommend.
January 6, 2024
The 2024 updated version of this young-adult history book is an astounding, powerful and wonderfully readable treasure-trove of material, all meticulously retrieved from an era in which escaped slaves were debriefed by people set on collecting their stories in the former slaves’ own words. Be these long-ago recorders literate Blacks or whites, abolitionists or reporters, they left records that allowed a phenomenally dedicated researcher and teacher, William Loren Katz, to dig deep (for three decades) for a perspective rarely heard. In other words, unlike many histories of the slave trade and emancipation, this one is told by people of that era, especially slaves and former slaves. I highly recommend this edition, with its new introduction, illustrations, photos and updates.
I do vigorously disagree that it’s for “ages 10 and up.” I would have no one under 12 read a book that mentions rape several times.
That being said, I consider it one of the most impressive history books I’ve read; I was constantly astounded by information I’d never heard before, and glued to the old illustrations and photographs. I could not put it down, and it’s a history book, not my usual genre. The best stories are about slaves heroically outwitting their enslavers by methods ranging from feigning sickness to hiding in swamps, to committing arson or poisoning those who hurt them. Like the two Black railroad workers who, upon seeing an oncoming, roaring locomotive, jumped off their handcar without telling the overseer riding with them. Many other more sobering accounts involve what slaves were willing to sacrifice in order to protect or reunite with loved ones, to rebel or escape.
Here’s just a taste of what I learned:
In 1562, Captain John Hawkins launched the English trade in enslaved people with a few small ships, 100 crewmen and 300 captured African men, women and children. Queen Elizabeth first denounced his effort and said it was “detestable and would call down vengeance from heaven.” But after she saw Hawkins’s huge profit, she became a major shareholder in his next African expedition.
In the Georgia Sea Islands, shoes were handed out once a year to slaves, a blanket every three years. Boys and girls younger than thirteen were not given clothing.
A Black child received her worst whipping for playing with a doll that belonged to her enslaver’s family. A hungry child was beaten for eating a biscuit.
Whites used to spell out words so Blacks couldn’t understand what was going on, recalled one female slave, “but I ran to Uncle and spelled them over to him, and he told me what they meant.”
In Natchez, Louisiana, Milla Granson, who learned to read from the children of her Kentucky master, ran a “midnight school” of 12 pupils each term that taught reading and writing between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. She graduated hundreds.
One planter found that a man he considered too blind to work in the field made “18 good crops for himself when the [Civil] War was over.”
A man named Jake told his Virginia enslaver, “You can sell me, lash me, or kill me. I ain’t caring which, but you can’t make me work no more.” The owner thought for a moment and said, “All right, Jake. I’m retiring you, but for God’s sake don’t say anything to the other niggers.”
It became so common for slaves to light their enslavers’ property on fire that in 1820, the American Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia announced it “declined making insurances in any of the slave states.”
In the South during the Civil War, slaves often snuck into jails to feed or free Union soldiers.
Six men escaped from Key West, Florida, in 1858 in a small boat and sailed to the Bahamas. They decided to write their enslavers. Most wrote insulting letters, a few apologized for taking his good horse, and one signed his letter “Your most obedient servant.” Sometimes formerly enslaved people sent enslavers bills for their labor.
At the Magruder plantation, enslaved workers rode into the yard on horseback, baked biscuits in the main house, took a bundle of bread and went back home to bed.
As the South lost laborers (slaves escaping), the Union army gained willing volunteers. Over campfires, after battle, young white soldiers taught Black refugees the magic of reading and writing. And as the Union Army advanced South, “the great majority of negroes – 80 percent – remained behind and came into our line.”
One of the most unusual wartime escapes was planned by Robert Smalls, the enslaved pilot of the Confederate battleship Planter, and his Black crew. On the evening of May 13, 1862, after the white captain and officers left the ship, Smalls and his African American crew picked up their families and loved ones on the shore. Smalls blinked the correct signal at Confederate-held Fort Sumter, sailed out of Charleston harbor at 4 a.m. and surrendered to the Union Navy.
During the Civil War, most Northerners were as strongly infected as enslavers with a belief in Black inferiority and bitterly resented fighting for Black liberation. Northern whites feared newly freed enslaved people would settle in the North and by working for less pay, take their jobs. This fear of emancipation and an unpopular military draft led to city rioting by the poor and uneducated.
QUOTES
In 1809, a South Carolina court ruled that “young slaves… stand on the same footing as other animals.”
[Slaves are] “a very troublesome species of property.” – President George Washington, 1794
Not all was straightforward. During the Civil War, as enslaved people deserted the plantation, one South Carolina planter realized his slaves’ true feelings. “We are all laboring under a delusion. I believed that these people were content, happy and attached to their masters. But events and recollection have caused me to change these opinions.”
Emily Douglass of Natchez always boasted of the undying loyalty of those she enslaved, but during the Civil War, “They left without even a good-bye.”
Formerly enslaved man Arnold Cragston spent four years rowing hundreds from Kentucky across the Ohio River, saying, “We just knew there was a lot of slaves always a-wantin’ to get free, and I had to help ’em.”
Without his Black troops, President Lincoln wrote in August 1864, “we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.”
When her servants suddenly disappeared, one woman enslaver asked, “If they’re not my slaves anymore, then whose are they?”
President Abraham Lincoln, though he personally hated bondage, initially stated his aim was to save the Union and not interfere with the South’s “internal institutions.” He reassured all Americans, “If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”
- This review also appears at https://yadudebooks.ca/
I do vigorously disagree that it’s for “ages 10 and up.” I would have no one under 12 read a book that mentions rape several times.
That being said, I consider it one of the most impressive history books I’ve read; I was constantly astounded by information I’d never heard before, and glued to the old illustrations and photographs. I could not put it down, and it’s a history book, not my usual genre. The best stories are about slaves heroically outwitting their enslavers by methods ranging from feigning sickness to hiding in swamps, to committing arson or poisoning those who hurt them. Like the two Black railroad workers who, upon seeing an oncoming, roaring locomotive, jumped off their handcar without telling the overseer riding with them. Many other more sobering accounts involve what slaves were willing to sacrifice in order to protect or reunite with loved ones, to rebel or escape.
Here’s just a taste of what I learned:
In 1562, Captain John Hawkins launched the English trade in enslaved people with a few small ships, 100 crewmen and 300 captured African men, women and children. Queen Elizabeth first denounced his effort and said it was “detestable and would call down vengeance from heaven.” But after she saw Hawkins’s huge profit, she became a major shareholder in his next African expedition.
In the Georgia Sea Islands, shoes were handed out once a year to slaves, a blanket every three years. Boys and girls younger than thirteen were not given clothing.
A Black child received her worst whipping for playing with a doll that belonged to her enslaver’s family. A hungry child was beaten for eating a biscuit.
Whites used to spell out words so Blacks couldn’t understand what was going on, recalled one female slave, “but I ran to Uncle and spelled them over to him, and he told me what they meant.”
In Natchez, Louisiana, Milla Granson, who learned to read from the children of her Kentucky master, ran a “midnight school” of 12 pupils each term that taught reading and writing between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. She graduated hundreds.
One planter found that a man he considered too blind to work in the field made “18 good crops for himself when the [Civil] War was over.”
A man named Jake told his Virginia enslaver, “You can sell me, lash me, or kill me. I ain’t caring which, but you can’t make me work no more.” The owner thought for a moment and said, “All right, Jake. I’m retiring you, but for God’s sake don’t say anything to the other niggers.”
It became so common for slaves to light their enslavers’ property on fire that in 1820, the American Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia announced it “declined making insurances in any of the slave states.”
In the South during the Civil War, slaves often snuck into jails to feed or free Union soldiers.
Six men escaped from Key West, Florida, in 1858 in a small boat and sailed to the Bahamas. They decided to write their enslavers. Most wrote insulting letters, a few apologized for taking his good horse, and one signed his letter “Your most obedient servant.” Sometimes formerly enslaved people sent enslavers bills for their labor.
At the Magruder plantation, enslaved workers rode into the yard on horseback, baked biscuits in the main house, took a bundle of bread and went back home to bed.
As the South lost laborers (slaves escaping), the Union army gained willing volunteers. Over campfires, after battle, young white soldiers taught Black refugees the magic of reading and writing. And as the Union Army advanced South, “the great majority of negroes – 80 percent – remained behind and came into our line.”
One of the most unusual wartime escapes was planned by Robert Smalls, the enslaved pilot of the Confederate battleship Planter, and his Black crew. On the evening of May 13, 1862, after the white captain and officers left the ship, Smalls and his African American crew picked up their families and loved ones on the shore. Smalls blinked the correct signal at Confederate-held Fort Sumter, sailed out of Charleston harbor at 4 a.m. and surrendered to the Union Navy.
During the Civil War, most Northerners were as strongly infected as enslavers with a belief in Black inferiority and bitterly resented fighting for Black liberation. Northern whites feared newly freed enslaved people would settle in the North and by working for less pay, take their jobs. This fear of emancipation and an unpopular military draft led to city rioting by the poor and uneducated.
QUOTES
In 1809, a South Carolina court ruled that “young slaves… stand on the same footing as other animals.”
[Slaves are] “a very troublesome species of property.” – President George Washington, 1794
Not all was straightforward. During the Civil War, as enslaved people deserted the plantation, one South Carolina planter realized his slaves’ true feelings. “We are all laboring under a delusion. I believed that these people were content, happy and attached to their masters. But events and recollection have caused me to change these opinions.”
Emily Douglass of Natchez always boasted of the undying loyalty of those she enslaved, but during the Civil War, “They left without even a good-bye.”
Formerly enslaved man Arnold Cragston spent four years rowing hundreds from Kentucky across the Ohio River, saying, “We just knew there was a lot of slaves always a-wantin’ to get free, and I had to help ’em.”
Without his Black troops, President Lincoln wrote in August 1864, “we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.”
When her servants suddenly disappeared, one woman enslaver asked, “If they’re not my slaves anymore, then whose are they?”
President Abraham Lincoln, though he personally hated bondage, initially stated his aim was to save the Union and not interfere with the South’s “internal institutions.” He reassured all Americans, “If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”
- This review also appears at https://yadudebooks.ca/
March 20, 2024
So many facts and stories that I never knew about slavery and rebellion in America.
September 11, 2025
I could listen to stories of slave owners being poisoned and their houses being burnt down all day every day. :)
Want to read
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Black Indians were there as sure as Sitting Bull, Davy Crockett and Geronimo. Through careful research and rare antique prints and photographs, this book reveals how black and red people learned to live and work together in the Americas to oppose white oppression. Here is an American story that reveals a little-known aspect of our past and shatters some myths. #blackcowboys #blackindians
Black Indians were there as sure as Sitting Bull, Davy Crockett and Geronimo. Through careful research and rare antique prints and photographs, this book reveals how black and red people learned to live and work together in the Americas to oppose white oppression. Here is an American story that reveals a little-known aspect of our past and shatters some myths. #blackcowboys #blackindians
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews