T. W. Higginson (December 22, 1823 May 9, 1911) was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was indicted with Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for participation in the attempt to release the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, in Boston in 1853, and was engaged in the effort to make Kansas a free state after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized Black regiment, from 1862-1864. After the War, he spent a great deal of time writing about his ideas and experiences, describing his experiences with Black troops in Army Life in a Black Regiment in 1870. This text contains five chapters of Higginson's "Travellers and Outlaws: Episodes in American History", originally published in 1889. This collection is commonly referred to as Black Rebellion: Five Negro Slave Revolts.

Joshua Coffin (October 12, 1792 June 24, 1864) was an American antiquary and abolitionist. Coffin was a headstrong proponent of emancipation, and was one of the founders of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, being its first recording secretary. This book contains the complete text of Coffin's work, "An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections: And others, which have occurred, or been attempted, in the United States and elsewhere, during the last two centuries, with various remarks", originally published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1860. One of this text's accounts of Toussaint Louverture comes from the 1863 book "The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements" by Black abolitionist William Wells Brown.

William Wells Brown (November 6, 1816 November 6, 1884) was a prominent anti-slavery lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery near Lexington, Kentucky, Brown escaped to the North, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer.