These are the first-person accounts of two men, born into slavery in this country, who freed themselves, finding an opportunity to do that in the chaos created by the Civil War. The two men didn’t know one another and never met. One of them, Wallace Turnage, was a field hand in Alabama; the other, John Washington, was a household slave in Richmond, Virginia. Both men are remarkable people. The book contains each narrative, unedited for the most part and introduced by biographical essays on each man by historian David Blight, who has researched as much as possible the family histories of each and what happened before, during, and after their successful bid for freedom.