HIST 3401 | American Pluralism to 1877: a Resource Guide: Textbooks

The American Yawp offers a free and online, collaboratively built, open American history textbook designed for college-level history courses. The American Yawp is by scholars, for scholars. All contributors—experienced college-level instructors—volunteer their expertise to help democratize the American past for twenty-first century classrooms.

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A downloadable, free-to-use textbook licensed under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 unported license. This textbook examines U.S. History from before European Contact through Reconstruction, while focusing on the people and their history.

As Frederick Douglass writes in the last paragraph of this autobiography, in 1841 he became an orator for the Anti-Slavery Society. By 1845 he had become well-known for his performances at abolitionist rallies, but he was so articulate and intelligent that many people had begun to doubt he had ever actually been a slave. He wrote his Narrative both to "prove" his identity, and to bring his eloquent indictment of slavery to a wider audience. It was probably the best-selling of all the fugitive slave narratives: 5000 copies were sold within four months of its first printing, and 6 new editions were published between 1845 and 1849. Douglass published two later versions of his autobiography: My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).