Like Douglass' "Heroic Slave," Martin Delany's Blake is the story of an African American who chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation. Blake repeatedly dismisses Christianity as his "oppressors' religion," and in this text "stand still and see the salvation" means wait and plot in secret until the signal for the insurrection comes. Delany was one of the most out-spoken black critics of Stowe's novel, but there is much about Blake that remains unknown, including how soon after the appearance of Uncle Tom's Cabin Delany began writing it, and whether he ever finished it. Included in this archive is Part One, or just about exactly the first half, of the novel. Most of Part One (chapters 1-23 and 29-31) originally appeared serially in The Anglo-African Magazine, January to July, 1859. The rest of Part One was first published when Delany reprinted the story in The Weekly Anglo-African, November, 1861, to May, 1862. It was not published in book form until 1970, when Floyd J. Miller prepared an edition of Part One and the first 40 chapters of Part Two (all that have been recovered) for the Beacon Press.

Both Parts use quatrains from a poem by Stowe as epigraphs, although Delany's vision is of armed slave rebellion rather than Christian submission.