author
active 1787-1834 Jesse Torrey
A physician and reform-minded writer from early nineteenth-century Philadelphia, he is best remembered for gathering first-hand accounts that exposed slavery and kidnapping in the United States. His work stands out for turning witness testimony into a powerful moral argument.
1 Audiobook
American Slave Trade Or, An Account of the Manner in which the Slave Dealers take Free People from some of the United States of America, and carry them away, and sell them as Slaves in other of the States; and of the horrible Cruelties practised in the carrying on of this most infamous Traffic
by active 1787-1834 Jesse Torrey
About the author
Born in 1787, Jesse Torrey Jr. was an American physician and writer whose work connected medicine, reform, and publishing. He is best known for collecting accounts from African Americans and other witnesses about slavery and kidnapping, then shaping those testimonies into books meant to stir public conscience.
His best-known work, A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States (1817), drew on first-hand narratives as well as his own observations. He also wrote American Slave Trade and produced practical books for younger readers, showing a range that ran from moral reform to education.
Though not a widely remembered literary figure today, Torrey's writing remains important as early documentary evidence about the domestic slave trade in the United States. It gives modern readers a direct sense of how urgently some writers of his era tried to confront injustice.