The story of the anti-slavery movement in Ireland is little known, yet when Frederick Douglass visited the country in 1845, he described Irish abolitionists as the most 'ardent' that he had ever encountered. Moreover, their involvement proved to be an important factor in ending the slave trade, and later slavery, in both the British Empire and in America. While Frederick Douglass remains the most renowned black abolitionist to visit Ireland, he was not the only one. This publication traces the stories of ten black abolitionists, including Douglass, who travelled to Ireland in the decades before the American Civil War, to win support for their cause. It opens with former slave, Olaudah Equiano, kidnapped as a boy from his home in Africa, and who was hosted by the United Irishmen in the 1790s; it closes with the redoubtable Sarah Parker Remond, who visited Ireland in 1859 and chose never to return to America. The stories of these ten men and women, and their interactions with Ireland, are diverse and remarkable.

This book examines Theodore Gericault's images of black men, women and children who suffered slavery's trans-Atlantic passage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including his 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa. The book focuses on Gericault's depiction of black people, his approach towards slavery, and the voices that advanced or denigrated them. By turning to documents, essays and critiques, both before and after Waterloo (1815), and, most importantly, Gericault's own oeuvre, this study explores the fetters of slavery that Gericault challenged-alongside a growing number of abolitionists-overtly or covertly. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, race and ethnic studies and students of modernism.

Contributors from the US, Britain and Europe explore a neglected aspect of transatlantic slavery: the implication of a continental European hinterland. Slavery Hinterland explores a neglected aspect of transatlantic slavery: the implication of a continental European hinterland. It focuses on historical actors in territories that were not directly involved in the traffic inAfricans but linked in various ways with the transatlantic slave business, the plantation economies that it fed and the consequences of its abolition. The volume unearths material entanglements of the Continental and Atlantic economies and also proposes a new agenda for the historical study of the relationship between business and morality. Contributors from the US, Britain and continental Europe examine the ways in which the slave economy touched on individual lives and economic developments in German-speaking Europe, Switzerland, Denmark and Italy. They reveal how these 'hinterlands' served as suppliers of investment, labour and trade goods for the slave trade and of materials for the plantation economies, and how involvement in trade networks contributed in turn to key economic developments in the 'hinterlands'. The chapters range in time from the first, short-lived attempt at establishing a German slave-trading operation in the 1680s to the involvement of textile manufacturers in transatlantic trade in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. A key theme of the volume is the question of conscience, or awareness of being morally implicated in an immoral enterprise. Evidence for subjective understandings of the moral challenge of slavery is found in individual actions and statements and also in post-abolition colonisation and missionary projects. FELIX BRAHM is Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in London. EVE ROSENHAFT is Professor of German Historical Studies, University of Liverpool. CONTRIBUTORS: Felix Brahm, Peter Haenger, Catherine Hall, Daniel P. Hopkins, Craig Koslofsky, Sarah Lentz, Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Anne Sophie Overkamp, Alexandra Robinson, Eve Rosenhaft, Anka Steffen, Klaus Weber, Roberto Zaugg

Read Chapter One.

Frederick Douglass and George Fitzhugh disagreed on virtually every major issue of the day. On slavery, women's rights, and the preservation of the Union their opinions were diametrically opposed. Where Douglass thundered against the evils of slavery, Fitzhugh counted its many alleged blessings in ways that would make modern readers cringe. What then could the leading abolitionist of the day and the most prominent southern proslavery intellectual possibly have in common? According to David F. Ericson, the answer is as surprising as it is simple; liberalism.

In The Debate Over Slavery David F. Ericson makes the controversial argument that despite their many ostensible differences, most Northern abolitionists and Southern defenders of slavery shared many common commitments: to liberal principles; to the nation; to the nation's special mission in history; and to secular progress. He analyzes, side-by-side, pro and antislavery thinkers such as Lydia Marie Child, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Thomas R. Dew, and James Fitzhugh to demonstrate the links between their very different ideas and to show how, operating from liberal principles, they came to such radically different conclusions. His raises disturbing questions about liberalism that historians, philosophers, and political scientists cannot afford to ignore.

A powerful and riveting condemnation of American slavery, 12 Years a Slave is the harrowing true story of Solomon Northup who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, enduring unimaginable degradation and abuse until his rescue twelve years later. Steve McQueen's powerful film adaptation starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Benedict Cumberbatch won Best Picture at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes in 2014. Tricked by two men offering him a job as a musician in New York State in 1841, Solomon Northup was drugged and kidnapped. His life is jeopardy, he was forced to assume a new name and fake past. Taken to Louisiana on a disease-ridden plague ship, he was initially sold to a cotton planter. In the twelve years that follow he is sold to many different owners who treat him with varying levels of savagery; forced labour, scant food and numerous beatings are his regular fare. Against all odds, Northup eventually succeeds in contacting a sympathetic party and manages to get word to his family. The ensuing rescue and legal cases are no less shocking and intriguing than the rest of the tale. A true-life testament to tremendous courage and tenacity in the face of unfathomable injustice, Northup's account also provides a rare insight into a murky past being meticulous first-hand recordings of slave life. A new film premiering in 2013, featuring Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch, is sure to introduce this amazing story to a new audience.

Female Slaves in the Plantation South
Revised Edition, with a new introduction and an additional chapter

"This is one of those rare books that quickly became the standard work in its field. Professor White has done justice to the complexity of her subject."—Anne Firor Scott, Duke University

Living with the dual burdens of racism and sexism, slave women in the plantation South assumed roles within the family and community that contrasted sharply with traditional female roles in the larger American society. This new edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, exploring new ways of understanding the intersection of race and gender and comparing the myths that stereotyped female slaves with the realities of their lives. Above all, this groundbreaking study shows us how black women experienced freedom in the Reconstruction South — their heroic struggle to gain their rights, hold their families together, resist economic and sexual oppression, and maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds.

"Original and balanced. . . . [A] splendidly written book."—Carl N. Degler, Stanford University

• Winner of the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize

Faith and Slavery in the Presbyterian Diaspora considers how, in areas as diverse as the New Hebrides, Scotland, the United States, and East Central Africa, men's and women's shared Presbyterian faith conditioned their interpretations of and interactions with the institution of chattel slavery. The chapters highlight how Presbyterians' reactions to slavery -which ranged from abolitionism, to indifference, to support-reflected their considered application of the principles of the Reformed Tradition to the institution. Consequently, this collection reveals how the particular ways in which Presbyterians framed the Reformed Tradition made slavery an especially problematic and fraught issue for adherents to the faith. Faith and Slavery, by situating slavery at the nexus of Presbyterian theology and practice, offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between religion and slavery. It reverses the all too common assumption that religion primarily served to buttress existing views on slavery, by illustrating how groups' and individuals reactions to slavery emerged from their understanding of the Presbyterian faith. The collection's geographic reach-encompassing the experiences of people from Europe, Africa, America, and the Pacific-filtered through the lens of Presbyterianism also highlights the global dimensions of slavery and the debates surrounding it. The institution and the challenges it presented, Faith and Slavery stresses, reflected less the peculiar conditions of a particular place and time, than the broader human condition as people attempt to understand and shape their world.

This new, bold, precedent-setting study conclusively demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, significant numbers of slaves did quite frequently rebel against their masters and struggled to attain their freedom. By surveying a wealth of documents, such as planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, the book shows readers how slaves resisted; when, where, and how they escaped; where they fled to; how long they remained in hiding; and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it also examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves.

Reflecting a lifetime of thought by one of our leading authorities on African-American history, Runaway Slaves illuminates as never before the true nature of that "most peculiar institution" of the South.

In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, David Robertson illuminates the shadowy figure who planned a slave rebellion so daring that, if successful, it might have changed the face of the antebellum South. This is the story of a man who, like Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, is a complex yet seminal hero in the history of African American emancipation.

Denmark Vesey was a charasmatic ex-slave--literate, professional, and relatively well-off--who had purchased his own freedom with the winnings from a lottery. Inspired by the success of the revolutionary black republic in Haiti, he persuaded some nine thousand slaves to join him in a revolt. On a June evening in 1822, having gathered guns, and daggers, they were to converge on Charleston, South Carolina, take the city's arsenal, murder the populace, burn the city, and escape by ship to Haiti or Africa. When the uprising was betrayed, Vesey and seventy-seven of his followers were executed, the matter hushed by Charleston's elite for fear of further rebellion. Compelling, informative, and often disturbing, this book is essential to a fuller understanding of the struggle against slavery.

"Stunning."
"--Publishers Weekly"

"A well-researched study that neither allocates blame nor exonerates the participants in the peculiar institution, but puts to rest a pernicious anti-Semitic libel of recent coinage."
"--Kirkus Reviews"

"For anyone in search of ammunition to refute farfetched claims about Jewish culpability for the enslavement of Africans in America, this is the place to look."
"--Peter Kolchin, Los Angeles Times"

"Exhaustive. . . . A scholarly, careful work."
"--The Washington Post Book World (front page)"

In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great divide has opened up between African American and Jewish communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive relationship has suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend, that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in the population.

In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish and African diasporic history.
Focusing on the British empire, Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research utilizing shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers, censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records reveals, once and for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation of Africans in theAmericas.

A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested historical controversies of our time.

Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture is the first book to critically explore how slaveholding and the subordination of women shaped ancient societies and reveals how women and slaves intersected with one another in both the cultural representations and the social realities of classical antiquity.
This erudite and well-documented book provokes questions about how we can hope to recapture the experience, and subjectivity, of ancient women and slaves, and addresses the ways in which femaleness and servility interacted with other forms of difference, such as class, gender and status. Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture offers stimulating and frequently controversial insight into the complexities of gender and status in the ancient world.

The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination brings together ten original essays that explore the many connections between the Old and New Worlds in the early modern period. Divided into five sets of paired essays, it examines the role of specific port cities in Atlantic history, aspects of European migration, the African dimension, and the ways in which the Atlantic world has been imagined. This second edition has been updated and expanded to contain two new chapters on revolutions and abolition, which discuss the ways in which two of the main pillars of the Atlantic world-empire and slavery-met their end. Both essays underscore the importance of the Caribbean in the profound transformation of the Atlantic world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This edition also includes a revised introduction that incorporates recent literature, providing students with references to the key historiographical debates, and pointers of where the field is moving to inspire their own research. Supported further by a range of maps and illustrations, The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination is the ideal book for students of Atlantic History.

Truth's landmark slave narrative chronicles her experiences as a slave in upstate New York and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher. Based on the complete 1884 edition, this volume includes the "Book of Life," a collection of letters and sketches about Truth's life written subsequent to the original 1850 publication of the Narrative, and "A Memorial Chapter," a sentimental account of her death.

The rise and fall of the business of slave trading - by a bestselling historian The Atlantic slave trade was one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures. Between 1492 and about 1870, ten million or more black slaves were carried from Africa to one port or another of the Americas. In this wide-ranging book, Hugh Thomas follows the development of this massive shift of human lives across the centuries until the slave trade's abolition in the late nineteenth century.

Many Canadians believe their nation fell on the right side of history in harbouring escaped slaves from the United States. In fact, in the wake of the American Revolution, many Loyalist families brought slaves with them when they settled in the Maritime colonies of British North America. Once there, slaves used their traditions of survival, resistance, and kinship networks to negotiate their new reality. Harvey Amani Whitfield's book, the first on slavery in the Maritimes, is a startling corrective to the enduring and triumphant narrative of Canada as a land of freedom at the end of the Underground Railroad.

The most famous memoir of its kind and a key text in the anti-slavery movement, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells the striking and emotionally charged story of one man's journey from slavery to freedom. Complete & Unabridged. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Dr Lydia Plath. Born into a life of slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass spent his youth passed from master to master, from city to field, and subjected to unimaginable cruelty. Along this journey he sought knowledge, he learned to read and write, and he discovered that education was his key to salvation. Using everything he learned and fuelled by all he was forced to endure, Douglass managed to escape and then, eventually, to free himself from slavery. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a startlingly honest account of his struggle, played a fundamental role in the abolition of slavery, a movement that Douglass dedicated his life to.

A collection of essays in which every contributor focuses upon some aspect of slave emancipation with the aim of assessing to what extent the outcome met with expectation. The hopes and disappointments that characterized the transition from slavery to freedom are depicted.

Emancipation The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844-1944 J. Clay Smith, Jr. Foreword by Justice Thurgood Marshall "A monumental achievement."--"Southern University Law Review" "Emancipation is the first truly comprehensive reference book covering the first one hundred years of African Americans in the legal profession. Other legal historians and biographers must take Smith's work as a starting point for gauging the impact Black lawyers and institutions have had upon the evolution of the American legal profession."--"Black Issues in Higher Education" "The sheer quantity of information contained in Emancipation is overwhelming; the impact of page after page of data, stories and lives, and the thousands of detailed, extensive footnotes and documentation is simply overpowering. It is a monumental achievement."--"Southern University Law Review" "A remarkable piece of scholarship. . . . "Emancipation" contains a wealth of information previously unknown even to those who consider themselves well-informed about African-American history. . . . It will, I am sure, serve as the definitive authority on the history of black lawyers for years to come."--"St. Louis Post-Dispatch" Winner of the W. E. B. Du Bois Book Award of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists ""Emancipation" is an important and impressive work; one cannot read it without being inspired by the legal acumen, creativity, and resiliency these pioneer lawyers displayed. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in understanding the road African-Americans have traveled and the challenges that lie ahead."--From the Foreword, by Justice Thurgood Marshall J. Clay Smith, Jr., is Professor of Law and formerly Dean at the Howard University School of Law. He has served as President of the Washington Bar Association, as National President of the Federal Bar Association, and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter U.S. Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of which he later served as Acting Chairman under President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of "Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers" and editor of "Supreme Justice: Speeches and Writings" of Thurgood Marshall. 1993 760 pages 6 x 9 30 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1685-1 Paper $36.50s 24.00 World Rights Law, African-American/African Studies, American History

This autobiographical account by a former slave is one of the few extant narratives written by a woman. Written and published in 1861, it delivers a powerful, unflinching portrayal of the brutality of slave life. Jacobs speaks frankly of her master's abuse and her eventual escape, in an amazing and inspirational account of one woman's dauntless spirit and faith.

Covering the colonial period to the Civil War, spanning all of the northern United States, In Hope of Liberty documents the antebellum northern black experience. In examining churches, schools, music, living arrangements, occupations, even the underground railroad, the Hortons point out the central role of the black community in successfully managing the tensions born of assimilation and cultural difference. In the process, they detail the extensive national contributions of northern blacks.

New Masters: Northern Planters during the Civil War and Reconstruction, analyzes the North's efforts to transform the South, both during and after the war, into a free labor economy and society. In this ground-breaking work, Lawrence N. Powell addresses the role that the twenty to fifty thousand "new masters," or northern planters, had on the post-reconstruction system. Covering evidence of over five hundred northern planters, Powell asserts that northern emigrants provided much of the capital that hard-pressed southern planters used to stave off bankruptcy; showing that these planters became both the catalyst that perpetuated the plantation system of servitude and debt, as well as became the reason behind the revitalization of the South. New Masters deals with a variety of issues, including race relations, Northern planters' motivations, work habits, capital investment patterns, and the planters' gradual disillusionment as problems mounted and profits declined.

The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations addresses the history of the Freedmen's Bureau at state and local levels of the Reconstruction South. In this lively and well-documented book, the authors discuss the diversity of conditions and the personalities of the Bureau's agents state by state. They offer insight into the actions and thoughts, not only of the agents, but also of the southern planters and the former slaves, as both of these groups learned how to deal with new responsibilities, new advantages and disadvantages, and altered relationships. The period of Reconstruction was a troubling time in the history of the South. The Congress of the United States passed laws and the President issued edicts, but more often than not, the results of Reconstruction in a particular area depended primarily on the character and personality of an individual Bureau agent. The agents were on the front line of this postwar battle against hatred, bigotry, fear, ignorance, and helplessness. This work presents accounts, often in their own words, about how the agents and officers of the Freedmen's Bureau reacted to the problems that they faced and the people with whom they dealt on a day-to-day basis. Although the primary intent of Professors Cimbala and Miller is to enhance the research on post-Civil War Reconstruction and the role of the Freedmen's Bureau for the benefit of historians, the book is a good read for any lover of American history or armchair psychologist. Also, it has social value regarding the roots of the hatred, violence, and bigotry between the races that has come down through the generations to the present day. We are all products of our history, whether we are white or black, southern or northern. Only through an understanding of this history can we better approach the problems that remain to be solved.

"For a Vast Future Also": Essays from The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, brings together the most informative and thoughtful articles by fourteen accomplished scholars in the Lincoln field. The essays provide compact, detailed treatments concerning different facets of three general themes: Lincoln and the problems of emancipation; Lincoln and presidential politics; and the Lincoln legacy. Readers of the collection will understand why the Civil War profoundly changed the nation. These essays give insight into how Lincoln and his administration dealt with the profound issues of war and slavery and the continuing legacy of Lincoln and the war. No book or essay collection brings together the writings of such luminaries in the field as John Hope Franklin, James M. McPherson, Don E. Fehrenbacher, T. Harry Williams, Phillip S. Paludan, Harold Hyman, John Niven, William A. Gienapp, Norman B. Ferris, John T. Hubbell, Arthur Zilversmit, Eugene H. Berwanger, Christopher N. Breiseth, and Michael Vorenberg. Researchers now have these valuable essays available in one volume. It offers the general public the distillation of scholarship supported by the Abraham Lincoln Association over the past twenty-five years. And college and university introductory courses will find this book a valuable summary of, and introduction to, the major issues of the Civil War period.

In Imperfect Equality, Richard Fuke has explores the immediate aftermath of slavery in Maryland, which differed in important ways from the slaveholding states of the South: it never left the Union; white radicals had a period of access to power; and even prior to legal emancipation, a large free black population resided there. Moreover, the presence of Baltimore, a major city and port, provided abundant evidence with which to compare the rural and the urban experience of black Marylanders. This state study is therefore uniquely revealing of the successes and failures of the post-emancipation period. The transition in Maryland from a slave to a free society, Fuke argues, presented to black Marylanders opportunities to achieve previously inaccessible goals. Blacks were able to realize some goals, such as greater land ownership, control over the labor of their children, education, and the formation of independent cultural and social organizations, through their own intrepidity combined with the support of white radicals as well as with the assistance of the Freedmen's Bureau, the United States Army, and some state-controlled agencies. Other goals-such as social equality, economic opportunity and advancement, and suffrage-remained beyond the reach of blacks, not only because of conservative white opposition, but also, Fuke argues, because of the attitudinal limitations of white radicals unable to confront the full range of post-emancipation possibilities. Calling upon a very broad range of sources, Fuke demonstrates that after emancipation, Black Marylanders neither enjoyed total freedom nor suffered absolute coercion, but their struggle made two things clear: much of whatever they might accomplish, they would have to do by themselves; and such efforts would remain confined by white attitudes determined to regulate them.

In Imperfect Equality, Richard Fuke has explores the immediate aftermath of slavery in Maryland, which differed in important ways from the slaveholding states of the South: it never left the Union; white radicals had a period of access to power; and even prior to legal emancipation, a large free black population resided there. Moreover, the presence of Baltimore, a major city and port, provided abundant evidence with which to compare the rural and the urban experience of black Marylanders. This state study is therefore uniquely revealing of the successes and failures of the post-emancipation period. The transition in Maryland from a slave to a free society, Fuke argues, presented to black Marylanders opportunities to achieve previously inaccessible goals. Blacks were able to realize some goals, such as greater land ownership, control over the labor of their children, education, and the formation of independent cultural and social organizations, through their own intrepidity combined with the support of white radicals as well as with the assistance of the Freedmenas Bureau, the United States Army, and some state-controlled agencies. Other goalsasuch as social equality, economic opportunity and advancement, and suffragearemained beyond the reach of blacks, not only because of conservative white opposition, but also, Fuke argues, because of the attitudinal limitations of white radicals unable to confront the full range of post-emancipation possibilities. Calling upon a very broad range of sources, Fuke demonstrates that after emancipation, "Black Marylanders neither enjoyed total freedom nor suffered absolute coercion, but their struggle made two things clear: much of whatever they mightaccomplish, they would have to do by themselves; and such efforts would remain confined by white attitudes determined to regulate them."