5fish
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Location
- Central Florida
This was one of three books Lincoln listed influenced him ...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1599212110/?tag=civilwartalkc-20
Amazon review:
In this classic tale of adventure, a young American sea captain named James Riley, shipwrecked off the western coast of North Africa in 1915, was captured by a band of nomadic Arabs, and sold into slavery. Thus begins an epic adventure of survival and a quest for freedom that takes him across the Sahara desert.
This dramatic account of Captain Riley's trials and sufferings sold more than 1,000,000 copies in his day, and was even read by a young and impressionable Abraham Lincoln. The degradations of a slave existence and the courage to survive under the most harrowing conditions have rarely been recorded with such painful honesty.
Sufferings in Africa is a classic travel-adventure narrative, and a fascinating testament of white Americans enslaved abroad - during a time when slavery flourished through the United States.
Wall Street Journal : https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118073504137121925
Sufferings in Africa
By James Riley
1817
A 38-year-old Connecticut sea captain, James Riley, was shipwrecked off the Spanish Saharan coast in 1815 and captured by Arabs, who starved and tortured him. He nevertheless escaped and returned to write his memoirs, the final chapter of which contains an impassioned plea to outlaw the enslavement of Africans in America. The book became a national sensation and was especially popular among slavery's Abolitionist opponents. One of its most enthusiastic admirers was a young Indiana farm boy named Abraham Lincoln. Later, as president, Lincoln listed "Sufferings in Africa," along with the Bible and "The Pilgrim's Progress," as the books that most influenced his political thinking.
I found a site that listed books know to be read by Lincoln... and James Ripley's book was listed...
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2...ive-and-annotated-list?rgn=main;view=fulltext
A snippet...
Riley, James, An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce [1817]
A snippet...
This bibliography attempts to list, in alphabetical order by author, all the books or parts of books that any serious scholar, biographer, or bibliographer has asserted that Abraham Lincoln read. In the interest of completeness, even dubious claims have been listed. Newspapers or magazines have been excluded unless they were the only available source of a text that Lincoln read. Texts published as songs, hymns, and popular ditties are listed, but only those that Lincoln is said to have sung or recited himself (thus, no "Dixie," although Lincoln referred to the song in one of his speeches). Likewise, included are only those plays that Lincoln was known to have read, though his fondness for the theater in the White House years led him to many performances of works he did not know as texts (thus no Our American Cousin). Because of the importance of poetry in Lincoln's reading, titles of anthologized individual poems do appear, along with bibliographical information concerning such compendia. But the remainder of the contents of these "preceptors" or "recitation books" that Lincoln used as a boy are not detailed here, the occasional exceptions being prose pieces that would have been of obvious importance in the formation of Lincoln's mature thought (for instance, Jefferson's "First Inaugural" or Washington's "Farewell Address" at the end of his second presidential term). For all books, the years of first publication noted are for printings in English, whether in Great Britain or the United States.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1599212110/?tag=civilwartalkc-20
Amazon review:
In this classic tale of adventure, a young American sea captain named James Riley, shipwrecked off the western coast of North Africa in 1915, was captured by a band of nomadic Arabs, and sold into slavery. Thus begins an epic adventure of survival and a quest for freedom that takes him across the Sahara desert.
This dramatic account of Captain Riley's trials and sufferings sold more than 1,000,000 copies in his day, and was even read by a young and impressionable Abraham Lincoln. The degradations of a slave existence and the courage to survive under the most harrowing conditions have rarely been recorded with such painful honesty.
Sufferings in Africa is a classic travel-adventure narrative, and a fascinating testament of white Americans enslaved abroad - during a time when slavery flourished through the United States.
Wall Street Journal : https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118073504137121925
Sufferings in Africa
By James Riley
1817
A 38-year-old Connecticut sea captain, James Riley, was shipwrecked off the Spanish Saharan coast in 1815 and captured by Arabs, who starved and tortured him. He nevertheless escaped and returned to write his memoirs, the final chapter of which contains an impassioned plea to outlaw the enslavement of Africans in America. The book became a national sensation and was especially popular among slavery's Abolitionist opponents. One of its most enthusiastic admirers was a young Indiana farm boy named Abraham Lincoln. Later, as president, Lincoln listed "Sufferings in Africa," along with the Bible and "The Pilgrim's Progress," as the books that most influenced his political thinking.
I found a site that listed books know to be read by Lincoln... and James Ripley's book was listed...
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2...ive-and-annotated-list?rgn=main;view=fulltext
A snippet...
Riley, James, An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce [1817]
A snippet...
This bibliography attempts to list, in alphabetical order by author, all the books or parts of books that any serious scholar, biographer, or bibliographer has asserted that Abraham Lincoln read. In the interest of completeness, even dubious claims have been listed. Newspapers or magazines have been excluded unless they were the only available source of a text that Lincoln read. Texts published as songs, hymns, and popular ditties are listed, but only those that Lincoln is said to have sung or recited himself (thus, no "Dixie," although Lincoln referred to the song in one of his speeches). Likewise, included are only those plays that Lincoln was known to have read, though his fondness for the theater in the White House years led him to many performances of works he did not know as texts (thus no Our American Cousin). Because of the importance of poetry in Lincoln's reading, titles of anthologized individual poems do appear, along with bibliographical information concerning such compendia. But the remainder of the contents of these "preceptors" or "recitation books" that Lincoln used as a boy are not detailed here, the occasional exceptions being prose pieces that would have been of obvious importance in the formation of Lincoln's mature thought (for instance, Jefferson's "First Inaugural" or Washington's "Farewell Address" at the end of his second presidential term). For all books, the years of first publication noted are for printings in English, whether in Great Britain or the United States.