In the late 1830s, a young African was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and began a journey

that would eventually take him to the United States where he would join the Union Army

and fight in one of the first African American regiments.

Now as I say this, you might be thinking of pack slave ships that cross the Atlantic

and slave auctions, but this young man, Nicholas Said, was born a generation after the

Transatlantic slave trade was closed down and a decade after the British Empire outlawed

So how did slavery bring him to America?

Well, he was actually sold to the Ottomans first in the Middle East, and purchased by

a Russian prince and became his aide to camp and spent years in the courts of Europe, encountering

luminaries like Queen Victoria and Zardinicklas I.

When he finally came to America, he had an aristocratic heir about him, black Americans

were shocked by him, seeing his traditional ceremonial scars on his face, knowing a whole

lot about battle tactics as he was the son of a general back in Africa.

After the Civil War, he spent the rest of his life fighting for equality.

He became an advocate for education in the South, a public speaker and something of a minor

celebrity.

We're also one of the first black voting registrars.

Today's guest is Dean Calberth, author of the sergeant, the incredible wife of Nicholas

Said.

We look at the parallels and differences in the way slavery was practiced from a global

and religious perspective, and how one person was able to take the years of hardship and

slavery being permanently removed from his homeland and living as a foreigner and exile

...