For the components of my early American literature anthology, I have chosen three distinct works: "A Description of New England" (1616) by John Smith; "The Speech of Moses Bon Saam" (1735) by Moses Bon Saam; and. I have chosen these three particular works, moreover, because each of them deals, although in different ways, with the intense human drive for personal freedom and as a result, control over one's own destiny. The importance of human freedom, then, even at great personal cost, is a dominant theme of each of the works examined within this anthology.

             In the first of these, "A Description of New England" (1616) by John Smith, Captain John Smith, one of the first British settlers of early 17th century America, vividly describes the rich potential of New England, for those who have come here from Great Britain who, like himself, are willing to work hard now and sacrifice today so that their futures here will include freedom; prosperity; and personal autonomy. In the second work, "The Speech of Moses Bon Saam" (1735), the author, a former (escaped) Caribbean slave and now a rebel leader against white slaveholders in the Caribbean, encourages his fellow blacks who are still slaves to take risks and make sacrifices for the possibility of future personal freedom. In the third piece, Prefaces to Narrative of the Life of a Slave by Frederick Douglass, the power of Douglass himself as a public speaker and American Abolitionist leader, is examined from several perspectives: toward the common Abolitionist end that all American slaves, like Douglass himself, might eventually be free.

             The quest for personal freedom; autonomy; and the ability to make of one's present and future circumstances what one can and will, is a strong, perhaps the strongest, in fact, of all human drives. The importance of human freedom, then, is made abundantly clear in all three of the following works, and is therefore a key theme that they all share.