The New Man: Twenty-nine years a slave, twenty-nine years a free man

The author recounts his life from childhood in bondage through emancipation and later freedom, offering personal recollections of daily routines, labor, treatment by masters and overseers, and community life on Southern plantations. He contrasts varied experiences of benevolent and brutal masters, distinguishes differing temperaments and fortunes among the enslaved, and examines tensions with a dispossessed poor white class. The narrative covers wartime responsibilities left to enslaved people, the challenges of sudden freedom, and postwar struggles for self-support and uplift, combining anecdote, social observation, and reflections on character, honor, and progress since emancipation.