Eliot's account of Alexander's life is partly historical fiction, as portions of the narrative were altered by his close friend Jesse Benton Fremont at the request of the publishers.

James and Nancy Alexander had died by 1835, and their property and their enslaved were managed by their executor, William M. Campbell, providing the funds to care for their four orphaned children who had returned to Virginia to live with relatives.

During the American Civil War, Alexander overheard a meeting of local enslavers discussing a plot to sabotage a nearby railroad bridge using arms and ammunition they had stored in Captain James Campbell's icehouse.

In February 1863, Alexander covertly notified a group of U.S. Army soldiers under the command of Lt. Col. Arnold Krekel that the Peruque Creek railroad bridge had been sabotaged by Confederate insurgents.

However, on September 24, 1863, the St. Louis newspapers announced that Archer Alexander had been liberated by the Confiscation Act of 1862 because of his service to the U.S. military and Pitman's disloyalty to the United States.

That fall, Alexander paid a German farmer to help Louisa and his daughters escape from Naylor and join him in St. Louis, where she was also granted emancipation.

The funding for an Emancipation Memorial featuring a statue of Lincoln had begun with a $5 donation from a formerly enslaved person, Charlotte Scott, from Virginia.

In 1876, the statue was unveiled, with many notable people in attendance, including President Ulysses S. Grant, members of his cabinet, Supreme Court justices, other government figures, and Frederick Douglass, another formerly enslaved person.