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Narrated by Morgan Freeman, SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA presents American slavery as evolving from a loosely defined labor system in which Africans and later African Americans could take matters to court and own property, into the tightly regulated enslavement of individuals based solely on race. The series underscores the integral role slavery played in the growth of this country's Southern and Northern states; the fact that slaves were not a monolithic group but rather, individuals who came from many different cultures and were empowered by their backgrounds to navigate the environment into which they were thrust; and that they sought freedom in many ways, from joining the ranks of the British during the American Revolution to running off to Canada or joining rebel communities.

The set also includes the Hardcover companion book by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves. Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction. The authors document the horrors of slavery, particularly in the deep South, and describe the valiant struggles to escape bondage, from dramatic tales of slaves such as William and Ellen Craft to Dred Scott's doomed attempt to win his freedom through the Supreme Court. We see how slavery set our nation on the road of violence, from bloody riots that broke out in American cities over fugitive slaves, to the cataclysm of the Civil War. Along the way, readers meet such individuals as "Black Sam" Fraunces, a West Indian mulatto who owned the Queen's Head Tavern in New York City, a key meeting place for revolutionaries in the 1760s and 1770s. Indeed, the book is filled with stories of remarkable African Americans, from Sergeant William H. Carney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the crucial assault on Fort Wagner during the Civil War, to Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who led freed African Americans to a new life on the American frontier. With more than one hundred illustrations, Slavery and the Making of America is a gripping account of the struggles of African Americans against the iniquity of slavery.