The first-person accounts, by two slaves who were freed in the Civil War, about their life in slavery and later emancipation, caused a stir when they recently surfaced as documents in historical societies in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Now they are to be at the heart of a new book by Yale historian David Blight, called Rowing to Freedom: The Emancipation of John Washington and Wallace Turnage, in which Blight will offer the text of the two men's own accounts, with his own extensive commentary on their significance. Andrea Schulz bought world rights in the book for Harcourt from Boston publisher-turned-agent Wendy Strothman and will publish in 2006.