American Mobbing, 1828-1861 is a comprehensive history of mob violence in antebellum America. David Grimsted argues that, though the issue of slavery provoked riots in both the North and the South, the riots produced two different reactions. In the South anti-slavery rioting was widely tolerated and effectively encouraged Southern support for slavery. In the North, both pro-slavery and anti-slavery riots were put down, often violently, by the authorities, resulting usually in a public reaction against slavery. Grimsted thus demonstrates that mob violence was a major cause of the social split that led to the Civil War.

A searing-and sobering-account of the legal and extra-legal means by which systemic white racism has kept Black Americans 'in their place' from slavery to police and vigilante killings of Black men and women, from 1619 to the present. From the arrival of the first English settlers in America until now-a span of four centuries-a minority of white men have created, managed, and perpetuated their control of every major institution, public and private, in American society. And no group in America has suffered more from the harms imposed by white men's laws than African Americans, with punishment by law often replaced by extra-legal means. Over the centuries, thousands of victims have been murdered by lynching, white mobs, and appalling massacres. In White Men's Law, the eminent scholar Peter Irons makes a powerful and persuasive case that African Americans have always been held back by systemic racism in all major institutions that can hold power over them. Based on a wide range of sources, from the painful words of former slaves to test scores that reveal how our education system has failed Black children, this searing and sobering account of legal and extra-legal violence against African Americans peels away the fictions and myths expressed by white racists. The centerpiece of Irons' account is a 1935 lynching in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The episode produced a photograph of a blonde white girl of about seven looking at the hanging, bullet-riddled body of Rubin Stacy, who was accused of assaulting a white woman. After analyzing this gruesome murder and the visual evidence left behind, Irons poses a foundational question: What historical forces preceded and followed this lynching to spark resistance to Jim Crow segregation, especially in schools that had crippled Black children with inferior education? The answers are rooted in the systemic racism-especially in the institutions of law and education-that African Americans, and growing numbers of white allies, are demanding be dismantled in tangible ways. A thought-provoking look at systemic racism and the legal systems that built it, White Men's Law is an essential contribution to this painful but necessary debate.

First published in 1974, Fogel and Engerman's groundbreaking book reexamined the economic foundations of American slavery, marking "the start of a new period of slavery scholarship and some searching revisions of a national tradition" (C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books).

Slaveholders were preoccupied with presenting slavery as a benign, paternalistic institution in which the planter took care of his family and slaves were content with their fate. In this book, Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese discuss how slaveholders perpetuated and rationalized this romanticized version of life on the plantation. Slaveholders' paternalism had little to do with ostensible benevolence, kindness and good cheer. It grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation. At the same time, this book also advocates the examination of masters' relations with white plantation laborers and servants - a largely unstudied subject. Southerners drew on the work of British and European socialists to conclude that all labor, white and black, suffered de facto slavery, and they championed the South's 'Christian slavery' as the most humane and compassionate of social systems, ancient and modern.

In this provocative study Robert Harrison provides new insight into grass-roots Reconstruction after the Civil War and into the lives of those of those most deeply affected, the newly emancipated African Americans. Harrison argues that the District of Columbia, far from being marginal to the Reconstruction story, was central to Republican efforts to reshape civil and political relations, with the capital a testing ground for Congressional policy makers. The study describes the ways in which federal agencies such as the Army and the Freedmen's Bureau attempted to assist Washington's freed population and shows how officials struggled to address the social problems resulting from large-scale African-American migration. It also sheds new light on the political processes that led to the abandonment of Reconstruction and the onset of black disfranchisement. Finally, Washington, DC, during Civil War and Reconstruction is a valuable case study of municipal government in an era when Americans faced the challenges of a new urban-industrial society.

" The American conflict over slavery reached a turning point in the early 1840s when three leading abolitionists presented provocative speeches that, for the first time, addressed the slaves directly rather than aiming rebukes at white owners. By forthrightly embracing the slaves as allies and exhorting them to take action, these three addresses pointed toward a more inclusive and aggressive antislavery effort.These addresses were particularly frightening to white slaveholders who were significantly in the minority of the population in some parts of low country Georgia and South Carolina. The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism includes the full text of each address, as well as related documents, and presents a detailed study of their historical context, the reactions they provoked, and their lasting impact on U.S. history. Stanley Harrold, professor of history at South Carolina State University, is the author of Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865 and The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861. He lives in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

On the eve of the Revolution, the Carolina lowcountry was the wealthiest and unhealthiest region in British North America. Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry argues that the two were intimately connected: both resulted largely from the dominance of rice cultivation on plantations using imported African slave labor. This development began in the coastal lands near Charleston, South Carolina, around the end of the seventeenth century. Rice plantations spread north to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and south to Georgia and northeast Florida in the late colonial period. The book examines perceptions and realities of the lowcountry disease environment; how the lowcountry became notorious for its 'tropical' fevers, notably malaria and yellow fever; how people combated, avoided or perversely denied the suffering they caused; and how diseases and human responses to them influenced not only the lowcountry and the South, but the United States, even helping to secure American independence.

Harriet Ross Tubman, born enslaved in Maryland emerged from the most oppressive of conditions to lead others to freedom along the Underground Railroad and then continue her fight against slavery on the battlefields of the Civil War. During the last fifty years of her life in New York she campaigned for voting and civil rights, became an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, community organizer and leader. Harriet Tubman: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works captures her life, her works, and legacy. It features a chronology, an introduction offers a brief account of his life, a dictionary section lists entries on people, places, and events central to Tubman's life as an enslaved person, liberator, abolitionist, soldier, spy, wife, mother, and public figure, and includes the most recent research findings and the latest efforts to memorialize her.

The past half-century has produced a mass of information regarding slave resistance, ranging from individual acts of disobedience to massive uprisings. Many of these acts of rebellion have been studied extensively, yet the ultimate goals of the insurgents remain open for discussion. Recently, several historians have suggested that slaves achieved their own freedom by resisting slavery, which counters the predominant argument that abolitionist pressure groups, parliamentarians, and the governmental and anti-governmental armies of the various slaveholding empires were the prime movers behind emancipation. Marques, one of the leading historians of slavery and abolition, argues that, in most cases, it is impossible to establish a direct relation between slaves' uprisings and the emancipation laws that would be approved in the western countries. Following this presentation, his arguments are taken up by a dozen of the most outstanding historians in this field. In a concluding chapter, Marques responds briefly to their comments and evaluates the degree to which they challenge or enhance his view.

In the wake of the second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, inequalities and disparities were brought to light across the publishing industry. The need for more diverse, representative young adult literature gained new traction, resulting in an influx of young adult speculative fiction featuring African American young women. While the #BlackGirlMagic movement inspired a wave of positive African American female heroes in young adult fiction, it is still important to acknowledge the history and legacy of enslavement in America and their impact on literature. Many of the depictions of young Black women in contemporary speculative fiction still rely on stereotypical representations rooted in American enslavement. African American Adolescent Female Heroes: The Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Neo-Slave Narrative investigates the application of the neo-slave narrative structure to the twenty-first-century young adult text. Author Melanie A. Marotta examines texts featuring a female, adolescent protagonist of color, including Orleans, Tankborn, The Book of Phoenix, Binti, and The Black God's Drums, as well as series like the Devil's Wake series, Octavia E. Butler's Parable series, and the Dread Nation series. Taken together, these chapters seek to analyze whether the roles for adolescent female characters of color are changing or whether they remain re-creations of traditional slave narrative roles. Further, the chapters explore if trauma, healing, and activism are enacted in this genre.

William Wilberforce (1759 1833) was a politician, philanthropist and evangelical Christian, now best known for his work to end the slave trade. Elected to Parliament in 1780, he campaigned unsuccessfully for penal and electoral reform. In 1787, at the encouragement of his friend William Pitt, he took up the cause of abolition at Westminster, while Thomas Clarkson and others collected evidence and mobilised popular opinion. Wilberforce also lobbied tirelessly for the cause, but humanitarian and ethical arguments were slow to overcome the economic interests of those who had made fortunes from the slave trade or the use of slave labour. It was not until 1807 that the Abolition Bill was finally passed. Wilberforce continued his work for the emancipation of slaves, and also campaigned for religious liberty. This work, edited by two of his sons and published in 1840, includes their reply to criticisms by Thomas Clarkson of their earlier biography.

Originally published in 1847, William W. Brown offers a first-person narrative that details his enslavement and the daring escape that ultimately led to his freedom. It's a captivating tale and testament to the perseverance and strength of the human spirit. In this narrative, William W. Brown presents the true story of his birth and life as an enslaved African American. He provides a truthful look at his origins, noting the unfortunate dynamic between his Black mother and white father. Brown goes into great detail explaining the rules and regulations of plantation life. He also discusses working on a steamboat, which eventually leads to his escape. Narrative of William W. Brown is a sobering story that illuminates the horrors of an inhumane institution. It's personal and vital record that gives insight into the darkest time in American history. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Narrative of William W. Brown is both modern and readable.

Josephine Brown presents a detailed biography of her father, William Wells Brown, who was born on a plantation but escaped to become a successful abolitionist. Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter is a viable supplement to the original Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter gives new insight into William Wells Brown's eventful life. Josephine Brown presents a vivid account of his origins which began on a Kentucky plantation. She explains the glaring power imbalance between enslaved people, their overseers and plantation owners. She also explains how her father was hired out to perform various odd jobs including innkeeper, steamboat captain and even slave trafficker. It was a brutal existence where patience and persistence were key to survival. An illuminating record of one of the most prominent figures in the abolitionist movement. Josephine Brown provides an updated history of her father's personal and professional achievements. It's an eye-opening account of William Wells Brown's revolutionary life. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter is both modern and readable.

The lawyer and leading abolitionist James Stephen (1758 1832) published Volume 2 of The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated in 1830. The volume is an exposure of the cruel and oppressive practice of slavery in the British West Indies. It investigates the living conditions, feeding and clothing of slave populations; the brutal practices, such as 'slave driving', involved in forcing labour; and, by comparisons of forced and free labour, argues for the complete abolition of slavery. Stephen had been the legal mastermind of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the British Empire but not slavery itself. This important work was influential in directing public opinion against slavery and helped lead towards the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. It is a key text of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and is vital for understanding the arguments and debates that led to abolition.

Thomas Clarkson (1760 1846) was a leading campaigner against slavery and the African slave trade. After graduating from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1783, Clarkson with Granville Sharp (1735 1813) founded the Committee for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade in 1787, which increased popular support for abolition and was the main campaigner behind the abolition of the slave trade. These volumes, first published in 1808, contain a unique contemporary account of the abolition movement from one of its major leaders. Clarkson describes in great detail the Quaker background to the abolitionist movement and the parliamentary debates leading to the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The contemporary arguments both in support and in opposition to abolition and the researches and actions of the abolition movement's members are described, creating an important historical record of the movement. Volume 1 contains the early history of the abolition movement until July 1788.

Thomas Clarkson (1760 1846) was a leading campaigner against slavery and the African slave trade. After graduating from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1783, Clarkson with Granville Sharp (1735 1813) founded the Committee for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade in 1787, which increased popular support for abolition and was the main campaigner behind the abolition of the slave trade. These volumes, first published in 1808, contain a unique contemporary account of the abolition movement from one of its major leaders. Clarkson describes in great detail the Quaker background to the abolitionist movement and the parliamentary debates leading to the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The contemporary arguments both in support and in opposition to abolition and the researches and actions of the abolition movement's members are described, creating an important historical record of the movement. Volume 2 describes the campaign from June 1788 until March 1808.

In 1889 the Jesuit Richard F. Clarke published this biography of Charles Lavigerie (1825-1892), the French cardinal and Primate of Africa. From the moment of his arrival in Algeria in 1868, Lavigerie became a key, if sometimes controversial, figure in organising Catholic missions in Africa. In 1874 he founded the Society of Missionaries for Africa, otherwise known as the White Fathers after the white Arab dress they wore. Lavigerie's later career was devoted to the battle against slavery and in 1888 he conducted a campaign in several European capitals denouncing the practice. Clarke's book, which appeared a year after Lavigerie's visit to London, provides an account of the cardinal's career in France and Africa up to that date. It emphasises and praises Lavigerie's anti-slavery message, referring to him in the preface as 'the apostle of the slaves of all Africa'.

This book addresses historical issues of colonialism and race, which influenced the formation of multicultural society in Mauritius. During the 19th century, Mauritius was Britain's prime sugar-producing colony, yet, unlike the West Indies, its history has remained significantly under-researched. The modern demographic of multi-ethnic Mauritius is unusual as, in the absence of an indigenous people, descendants of colonists, slaves and indentured labourers constitute the majority of the island's population today. Thus, it may be said that the Mauritian nation was "assembled" during the period in question. This work draws on an in-depth examination of the two labour systems through which the island came to be populated: slavery and indenture. In studying the relevant laws, four legal events of historical importance within the context of these two labour systems are identified: the abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, private indentured labour migration and state-regulated indenture. This book is notable in that it presents a legal analysis of core historical events, thus straddling the line between two disciplines, and covers both slavery and indentured labour in Mauritian history. Mauritius, as an originally uninhabited island, presents a rare case study for inquiries into colonial legacies, multiculturalism and race consciousness. The book will be a valuable resource to scholars worldwide in the fields of slavery, indenture and the legal apparatus of forced labour.

Brazil was the American society that received the largest contingent of African slaves in the Americas and the longest lasting slave regime in the Western Hemisphere. This is the first complete modern survey of the institution of slavery in Brazil and how it affected the lives of enslaved Africans. It is based on major new research on the institution of slavery and the role of Africans and their descendants in Brazil. Although Brazilians have incorporated many of the North American debates about slavery, they have also developed a new set of questions about slave holding: the nature of marriage, family, religion, and culture among the slaves and free colored; the process of manumission; and the rise of the free colored class during slavery. It is the aim of this book to introduce the reader to this latest research, both to elucidate the Brazilian experience and to provide a basis for comparisons with all other American slave systems.

In 1759 a baby girl was born to an impoverished family on the Indian subcontinent. Her parents pawned her into bondage as a way to survive famine. A Portuguese slaver sold the girl to a pious French spinster in Bengal, where she was baptized as Madeleine. Eventually she was taken to France by way of Ile de France (Mauritius), and from there to Ile Bourbon (Reunion), where she worked on the plantation of the Routier family and gave birth to three children: Maurice, Constance, and Furcy. Following the master's death in 1787, Madame Routier registered Madeleine's manumission, making her free on paper and thus exempting the Routiers from paying the annual head tax on slaves. However, according to Madeleine's children, she was never told that she was free. She continued to serve the widow Routier for another nineteen years, through the Revolution, France's general emancipation of 1794 (which the colonists of the Indian Ocean successfully repelled), the Napoleonic restoration of slavery, and British occupation of France's Indian Ocean colonies. Not until the widow Routier died in 1808 did Madeleine learn of her freedom and that the Routier estate owed her nineteen years of back wages. Madeleine tried to use the Routiers' debt to negotiate for her son Furcy's freedom from Joseph Lory, the Routiers' son-in-law and heir, but Lory tricked the illiterate Madeleine into signing papers that, in essence, consigned Furcy to Lory as his slave for life. While Lory invested in slave smuggling and helped introduce sugar cultivation to Ile Bourbon, Furcy spent the next quarter century trying to obtain legal recognition of his free status as he moved from French Ile Bourbon to British Mauritius and then to Paris. His legal actions produced hundreds of pages that permit reconstruction of the lives of Furcy and his family in astonishing detail. The Cour Royale de Paris, France's highest court of appeal, finally ruled Furcy ne libre (freeborn) in 1843. Eight rare extant letters signed by Furcy over two decades tell in his own words how he understood his enslavement and freedom within these multiple legal jurisdictions and societies. France's general emancipation of 1848 erased the distinction between slavery and freedom for all former slaves but the reaction of 1851 excluded them from citizenship. The struggle for justice, respect, and equality for former slaves and their descendants would not be realized within Furcy's lifetime. The life stories of Madeleine and her three children are especially precious because, unlike scores of slave narratives published in the United States and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no autobiographical narrative of a slave held by French-published or unpublished-exists. This will be one of only a handful of modern biographies of enslaved people within France's empire, in French or in English, and the only one to explore transformations in slavery and freedom in French colonies of the Indian Ocean. This story is also significant because of the legal arguments advanced in Furcy's freedom suits between 1817 and 1843. Furcy's lawyers argued that he was free by race (as the descendent of an Indian rather than an African mother) and also by Free Soil (the legal principle whereby any slave setting foot on French soil thereby became free, since Madeleine resided in France before Furcy was born). Parallel debates surround the American case of Dred Scott, who began his long and unsuccessful bid for freedom in 1846 in the former French colonial city of St. Louis, Missouri, just three years after the French Cour Royale de Paris upheld Furcy's freedom on the basis of Free Soil. However, the French ruling that Furcy was free by Free Soil and the rejection of the racial argument offer a historical counterpoint to the infamous Taney opinion of 1857. The gripping story of Madeleine and her children is especially well-suited to exploring the developments of French colonization, plantation slavery, race, sugar cultivation, and abolitionism. A fluid narrative, it should have appeal for readers of the history of slavery, world history, Indian Ocean history, and French colonial history.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field. Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

Using documents drawn from newspapers, magazines, and books, this volume provides a documentary history of the relationships between labor and abolitionists from the early 1830s to the Civil War. It includes newspaper articles from mainstream dailies as well as from abolitionist journals and the labor press. The voices heard from include prominent abolitionist leaders, grass roots activists, representatives of the labor movement, land reformers, and utopian advocates of universal reform. The book shows labor's response to such critical episodes as the 1831 Nat Turner Revolt, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, John Brown's execution, and the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Themes covered include the contrast between wage labor and chattel slavery, the abolitionists' outreach to white labor, the views of reformers who held that a universal solution to the labor question took priority over abolition, the varying responses of labor activists to the slavery question, and labor's growing role in the 1850s as a constituent in an antislavery coalition. At the same time, the book notes the continued presence of racism and specific instances of friction between white and black workers, as in the explosive violence of the 1863 New York City Draft Riot.

By the Sweat of Your Brow brings together the contributions of seven scholars from the UK and the European continent on different aspects of the socio-economic setting of Roman slavery. Individual chapters discuss the slave chapter of Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices, the relationship between slave and free labour, the status of managerial slaves such as vilici and dispensatores, the use of legal sources for our understanding of the role of slavery in Roman society, the unchanging nature of slave prices from classical Athens and late antique Rome, the similarity in discourse and reality of the functions carried out by estate managers in ancient Rome and modern slave and serf societies, and, last, the structural relationship between a slave's peculium, the acquisition of freedom, and citizenship. Each chapter provides in-depth analysis of its chosen subject matter thus furthering the modern debate on the role of slavery in Rome's society and economy as well as on the interrelationship between the peculiar institution and its socio-economic setting.

"We've railed against injustice for decade upon decade, a lifetime of struggle and progress and enlightenment that we see etched in Fredrick Douglass's mighty, leonine gaze." -Barack Obama "My Bondage and my Freedom, besides giving a fresh impulse to antislavery literature, shows upon its pages the untiring industry of the ripe scholar."-William Wells Brown My Bondage and my Freedom (1845), a classic of American History writing and one of the most influential and ennobling autobiographies ever written, was composed while Fredrick Douglas was at his heights as an orator and writer. At the time of writing, Douglass had also reached the pinnacle of his work as a leader in the abolitionist movement and as an influential newspaper publisher. This incisive and eloquent book is at once an extraordinary story of resilience and a meditation on power, education, and freedom. The depictions of Fredrick Douglass's early life on a Maryland slave plantation, the series of relocations and abuses under various overseers, and his eventual freedom are an extraordinarily vivid portrait of the United States leading up to the beginning of the Civil War. My Bondage and my Freedom is a brilliant account of a singular life and as well as a scathing reproach to one of the darkest episodes of American history. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of My Bondage and my Freedom is both modern and readable.