The overseas editions of Douglass's autobiography repositioned the Narrative as a forum in which transnational power relations and the struggle for agency were mediated. Such repositioning helps illustrate the opportunities provided to Douglass by the slave narrative genre, particularly in terms of its semantic engagement with pro-and anti-slavery discourse, and related negotiation of the domestic divide between North and South in the United States. For the transnational Narrative not only establishes the international impact of anti-slavery activity, it also enables new national readings. It is therefore useful to review the transatlantic Narratives against the literary and political context provided by the United States at mid-century.

The United States at this point reflected the changing circumstances of American self-definition. National identity was being refashioned amidst the competing pulls of North, South and West. None was immune to the problems of slavery. One of the major national debates of the period concerned western expansion, specifically the issue of slavery and its legality in the newly incorporated territories. Although discussions of western expansion in US culture have emphasized the primacy of the frontier experience – civilization's encounter with savagery leading to the metaphysical triumph of freedom within the American cultural imaginary – the frontier territories also involved more earthly considerations of liberty at an historical moment in the United States notable for its ideological divisions. Nebraska and Texas illustrate that locations beyond North and South were increasingly stages upon which the realities as well as the debates around freedom and bondage were played out.