Customer Reviews

Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War (New Black Studies Series)

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Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War is an extraordinary chronicle of escaped slave Charles Nalle of Culpeper, Virginia, who was freed through force by Harriet Tubman and others. Freeing Charles portrays how he escaped through the Underground Railroad shortly before the American Civil War, and his encounters in the North. The entire incident involved one of the most severe anti-slavery riots outside of Harpers Ferry. Freeing Charles is more than a dry historical rendition; author Scott Christianson also portrays the slavery culture in Virginia, and the political and psychological forces driving Charles' dramatic true story. A snapshot of the borderline between rule of law and violent opposition to the culture of slavery, Freeing Charles is as captivating to read as it is scholarly and historical. Highly recommended.

This book was just too 'text book' and the print very small, for me to enjoy reading. I couldn't get past the first 60-70 pages, so I donated the book.

I loved this book. It not only tells a specific story about Charles, but it provides general background in a well done way that gives someone newer to Slaves escaping/their attempts that could be applied to many similar situations of the day. It's so well written, I could easily see someone producing a movie based on this book. Harriet Tubman also shows up in this story and it gives you a great glimpse of the essence of who she was and the devotion she had to her mission on the Underground Railroad.

American history has been sleeping with violence as if it were a warm quilt instead of the reality of breathing beneath its warmth so as to hide a sad and beaten heart. War on war, war under war, a birthright of American blood, with events repeating themselves, as the flag weaves in the wind, with the beating of the drums, forever then,and now, our call of the wild.

Men and women write a million words, few of which accomplish what Williuam Faulkner once said was the reason that he wrote, so that little children will not cry.

Tears are foreign, unknown, in this work of Scott Christianson, or when they fall, it is without the darkness of the warm quilt, but rather that of tiny chlldren, sliding from the womb into what we hope will be the blinding light of perserverance, or that which his protagonist embraced, time on time, in a story that moves the reader through many violent encounters. That Mr. Christianson does this with charm, compassion, and an obvious love for both the people and situations he describes, is as astonishing, as it is wonderful

William Faulkner also said that the mark of an artist can be measured by how able he or she is able to stop time, that is, to bring it to a halt so that the reader will enter the world which they have created, share their grief, embrace their love, cancel hate, and at the end of the story, know deeply, the passion that is buried In a simple intake of breath.

In this great work of art, Scott Christionson stops time with a vegenance, as well as assuring us that little childen will not cry.