A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery

Summary

Summary Born in 1815 in Caswell County, North Carolina, Moses Roper was the son of a white planter, Henry H. Roper, and Nancy, his house slave. When Roper was about six years old, he was sold away from his family, probably because of his light skin tone and embarrassing resemblance to his father. Roper was eventually bought by John Gooch, a cotton planter in Kershaw County ("Cashaw" in Roper's narrative), South Carolina. Harsh treatment at Gooch's hand led Roper, only a teenager at the time, to begin a long series of unsuccessful escape attempts. After Gooch sold him in 1832, Roper labored for a series of masters who took him through parts of Georgia and Florida. Finally bought by a Mr. Register—a Marianna, Florida, planter known for his cruel treatment of slaves—Roper ran away yet again, beginning what would ultimately be a successful escape. After walking over 350 miles from Marianna to Savannah, Georgia, Roper gained employment as a steward on the Fox, a schooner that sailed North in August 1834. Once there, Roper traveled through New York, Vermont and Massachusetts , working various jobs. During his time in Boston, he met local abolitionists , including William Lloyd Garrison, and became a signatory to the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Roper still lived in fear of being returned to slavery in the South, however, so in November 1835, he sailed on The Napoleon for Liverpool, England. Upon arriving in England, where slavery had been abolished a year earlier , Roper connected with prominent British abolitionists, who paid for him to be formally educated and employed him on the anti-slavery lecture circuit. Roper's Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery was first published in London in 1837; a U.S. edition appeared the next year. In 1839, Roper married Ann Stephen Price, an Englishwoman who helped him with his copious anti-slavery work. In 1844, after nine years of lecturing, Roper estimated that he had given two thousand speeches. He eventually purchased a farm in western Canada and moved there with his wife and their child. Most details concerning the rest of Roper's life, including the date and place of his death, remain unknown.  5 Extremely popular with abolitionist audiences in both England and America, Moses Roper's Narrative was published in ten different editions between 1837 and 1856, and was even translated into Celtic. In the Narrative 's first edition, a letter from Rev. Thomas Price, one of Roper's British sponsors, introduces the text. In later editions, Roper excises Price's letter, and introduces his work himself. In doing so, Roper emphasizes his authorial independence by breaking with one of the formal conventions of fugitive slave narratives, in which prominent white abolitionists typically introduce an African American's autobiographical account. The 1848 edition of Roper's text—the version summarized here—is the longest version of the Narrative; it includes Roper's preface as well as an appendix. This appendix features a short note (dated March 1846) updating readers on Roper's life after slavery, poems written by Roper's admirers, correspondence from readers of his Narrative, and lists of the towns in England he visited and the denominations of the groups to which he lectured. Roper's story, like many freedom narratives, begins with an explanation of his origins, specifically his mixed-race parentage. Since his father is white (he alternately describes his mother as both "half white" and "part Indian, part African"), Roper is light-skinned (p. 7, p. 43). One unique feature of Roper's Narrative is its frank discussion of how this light skin tone sometimes enables him to "pass"—to be identified as a white/Native American man rather than an enslaved black man—in order to avoid capture and re-enslavement. Throughout the Narrative, Roper's skin color functions alternately as both a curse and a blessing. White slave owners resent Roper's light complexion and thus single him out for abuse, but on his numerous escape attempts, he is frequently able to convince whites that he is not a fugitive slave. For example, when an overseer on a North Carolina plantation discovers Roper, the man recognizes Roper as a runaway slave and aims to return him to his owner. The overseer's wife however, successfully insists that Roper is not "of the African origin," for "she had seen white men still darker . . ." (p. 17). The overseer and his wife then feed...