author
Benjamin Drew
1812–1903
Best known for preserving the voices of formerly enslaved people who escaped to Canada, this Boston abolitionist gathered firsthand testimonies that still matter to readers and historians today. His work offers a rare, deeply human view of slavery from the perspective of people who survived it.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1812, Benjamin Drew was an American abolitionist and writer associated with Boston. He is remembered above all for collecting and publishing testimonies from freedom seekers who had escaped slavery and rebuilt their lives in Canada.
In the mid-1850s, Drew traveled through Upper Canada and interviewed more than 100 formerly enslaved people. Those accounts were published in The Refugee: Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada and also became known through A North-Side View of Slavery. The book remains valuable because it centers firsthand experience and preserves voices that might otherwise have been lost.
Drew died in 1903. Though he is less widely known than some other antislavery figures, his legacy endures through the people he listened to and the remarkable record he helped leave behind.