Mr. Bruce’s narration of his experiences begins with his childhood, when he was encouraged by his master to eat and play on his Virginia farm, and carries the reader through the intervening years, until when at Brunswick, practically in charge of his master’s business, the war came and changed a nominal freedom into an actual freedom.
Another prominent feature of the book, is Mr. Bruce’s contention that the two classes of people in the South should not divide along the line of race or color, and in this connection he furnishes argument to support his condemnation of the common blooded blacks and whites alike, whose bad conduct he asserts has brought shame and disgrace, and misery upon the better classes of white and Colored people of the South.
All the way through the book sets the reader to thinking and whoever may peruse its pages will be amply repaid for his time, and the reader may rest assured that he will not find it a task to read what Mr. Bruce has written. So far from this he will find that, after reading the first page, he will have a desire to read the second page, and his interest will increase to the end of the book.
J. H. N. Waring, M. D.,
Washington, D. C. Supervisor Public Schools.
Washington, D. C., April 19th, 1895.
I have read in manuscript, Mr. H. C. Bruce’s book, “The New Man,” and have been greatly interested in its perusal. It gives us a very novel, and I am sure a truthful glimpse of the life of the slave. I think it the only book that fairly represents the relations of the master and slave. Other books have been written on this topic, but they have been written for the purpose of inflaming prejudice, and the horrors of slave life appear to be greatly exaggerated. Mr. Bruce, however, has a simple story to tell and does it well.
This book may be read with profit by the Colored race for the example it affords. The author was a slave until his twenty-ninth year, but by diligence and hard work, in the face of all opposition, he has succeeded in educating himself and gaining positions of honor and trust.
I commend this book to any one who desires to get a true idea of the old-time slave in the cotton fields of the South.