Becoming Lunsford Lane: The Lives of an American Aeneas

by Craig Thompson Friend

Overview

By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803–79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists. Author of a unique “slave narrative” and a speaking partner with some of the era’s greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Lane became a celebrity who watched as the persona he created gradually faltered and failed him and his family. Yet even as his influence waned, it was still powerful enough to cause many to remake his image for their own purposes: as a fugitive from slavery, an entrepreneur, a Christian minister, and even an abolitionist (an identity he rejected). Lane also made many enemies who tried to silence him—a white mob determined to tar and feather him, reformers who saw his contributions to abolition as a threat to their causes, and a neighbor who attempted to set fire to the Lane home while Lunsford and his family slept inside.

In the first biography of Lunsford Lane based on original and extensive research, Craig Thompson Friend portrays a man who dreamed beyond his enslavement, delivered himself and his family from bondage, and spun a story of his life that brought him lasting freedom and fleeting fame. Friend casts light on Lane’s family origins as well as his complex relationships with his wife, parents, children, enslavers, fellow abolitionists, and nation. Lane’s story is a biography for our times: a man searching to define life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a changing American society scarred by contentious politics, economic challenges, class tensions, loss of political rights, and racial violence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469685342
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/27/2025
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Craig Thompson Friend is professor of history at North Carolina State University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a work of true excellence, a stunning achievement that combines deep research with elegant prose. Friend’s superb analysis draws a clear distinction between Lane the man and the inventive story of his life that Lane created. Though Friend goes to painstaking lengths to uncover Lane’s full historical truth, it is his fascination with this intriguing person that makes this book so readable.”—Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College

“This is a vital work on one of the most underrated African American reformers of the antebellum era. The writing is strong and often elegant, the arc of the biography long, and the argument for Lane’s importance is, quite simply, unimpeachable. Friend should be congratulated not only for producing a book that does justice to Lunsford Lane as an iconic figure in African American life and letters but also for crafting a biography that approaches high art. Beautiful and at times moving, this is one of the best books I have read in the past several years, on any topic.”—Richard S. Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology

“Friend convincingly shows us that we haven’t had a good look at the real Lunsford Lane—a father, husband, businessman, abolitionist, and medical practitioner—until now.”—Antwain K. Hunter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Becoming Lunsford Lane is a remarkable work—elegantly written and deeply researched. Craig Friend tells the poignant story of a formerly enslaved man who achieved fame by telling the story of his enslavement. With this book, Lane takes his place alongside other survivors of the inhumanity of slavery, like Frederick Douglass, who willed themselves into the national narrative.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

“In this impeccably researched and riveting book, Craig Friend brilliantly reconstructs the diverse worlds of Lunsford Lane, a self-emancipated abolitionist from North Carolina. Friend expertly leads us through border state slavery, northern abolition, and the aftermath of the Civil War, recovering the little known later checkered life of Lane and his forgotten legacy personified by his descendants' activism. This is not just biography, but a historical tour de force.”—Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920

“How do you tell the story of a storyteller, one made out by contemporaries to be a classical hero, a trickster, a self-made man? Can scholarship take the measure of the famous Lunsford Lane, an ordinary-yet-extraordinary freedman who had to represent both the crimes of slavery and the morality of self-purchase? Craig Friend marshals astonishingly wide and deep research, and a keen sensitivity to the personal costs of freedom as well as slavery. The result is among the most satisfying of the many studies of fugitives we now have, for its specificity, its honesty, and its humanity.”—David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence

Editorial Reviews

“This is a work of true excellence, a stunning achievement that combines deep research with elegant prose. Friend’s superb analysis draws a clear distinction between Lane the man and the inventive story of his life that Lane created. Though Friend goes to painstaking lengths to uncover Lane’s full historical truth, it is his fascination with this intriguing person that makes this book so readable.”—Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College

“This is a vital work on one of the most underrated African American reformers of the antebellum era. The writing is strong and often elegant, the arc of the biography long, and the argument for Lane’s importance is, quite simply, unimpeachable. Friend should be congratulated not only for producing a book that does justice to Lunsford Lane as an iconic figure in African American life and letters but also for crafting a biography that approaches high art. Beautiful and at times moving, this is one of the best books I have read in the past several years, on any topic.”—Richard S. Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology

“Friend convincingly shows us that we haven’t had a good look at the real Lunsford Lane—a father, husband, businessman, abolitionist, and medical practitioner—until now.”—Antwain K. Hunter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Becoming Lunsford Lane is a remarkable work—elegantly written and deeply researched. Craig Friend tells the poignant story of a formerly enslaved man who achieved fame by telling the story of his enslavement. With this book, Lane takes his place alongside other survivors of the inhumanity of slavery, like Frederick Douglass, who willed themselves into the national narrative.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

“In this impeccably researched and riveting book, Craig Friend brilliantly reconstructs the diverse worlds of Lunsford Lane, a self-emancipated abolitionist from North Carolina. Friend expertly leads us through border state slavery, northern abolition, and the aftermath of the Civil War, recovering the little known later checkered life of Lane and his forgotten legacy personified by his descendants' activism. This is not just biography, but a historical tour de force.”—Manisha Sinha, author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920

“How do you tell the story of a storyteller, one made out by contemporaries to be a classical hero, a trickster, a self-made man? Can scholarship take the measure of the famous Lunsford Lane, an ordinary-yet-extraordinary freedman who had to represent both the crimes of slavery and the morality of self-purchase? Craig Friend marshals astonishingly wide and deep research, and a keen sensitivity to the personal costs of freedom as well as slavery. The result is among the most satisfying of the many studies of fugitives we now have, for its specificity, its honesty, and its humanity.”—David Waldstreicher, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence

From the Publisher