During the revolutionary era, in the midst of the struggle for liberty from Great Britain, Americans up and down the Atlantic seaboard confronted the injustice of holding slaves. Lawmakers debated abolition, masters considered freeing their slaves, and slaves emancipated themselves by running away. But by 1800, of states south of New England, only Pennsylvania had extricated itself from slavery, the triumph, historians have argued, of Quaker moralism and the philosophy of natural rights. With exhaustive research of individual acts of freedom, slave escapes, legislative action, and anti-slavery appeals, Nash and Soderlund penetrate beneath such broad generalizations and find a more complicated process at work. Defiant runaway slaves joined Quaker abolitionists like Anthony Benezet and members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society to end slavery and slave owners shrewdly calculated how to remove themselves from a morally bankrupt institution without suffering financial loss by freeing slaves as indentured servants, laborers, and cottagers.

In Mastering Slavery, Fleischner draws upon a range of disciplines, including psychoanalysis, African-American studies, literary theory, social history, and gender studies, to analyze how the slave narratives--in their engagement with one another and with white women's antislavery fiction--yield a far more amplified and complicated notion of familial dynamics and identity than they have generally been thought to reveal. Her study exposes the impact of the entangled relations among master, mistress, slave adults and slave children on the sense of identity of individual slave narrators. She explores the ways in which our of the social, psychological, biological--and literary--crossings and disruptions slavery engendered, these autobiographers created mixed, dynamic narrative selves.

Slavery, War, and a New Birth of Freedom: 1840s-1877, a new title in the six-title series History Through Literature: American Voices, American Themes, provides insights and analysis regarding the history, literature, and cultural climate of the eras of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. It brings together informational text and primary documents that cover notable historic events and trends, authors, literary works, social movements, and cultural and artistic themes. Slavery, War, and a New Birth of Freedom begins with an interdisciplinary Chronology that identifies, defines, and places in context the notable historical events, literary works, authors' lives, and cultural landmarks of the period. This is followed by a comprehensive overview essay that summarizes the era's major historical trends, social movements, cultural and artistic themes, literary voices, and enduring works as reflections of each other and the spirit of the times. The core content comprises 20-30 articles on representative writers of the period, along with excerpts from essential literary works that highlight a historical theme, sociocultural movement, or the confluence of the two. These excerpts serve the Common Core emphasis on "informational texts from a broad range of cultures and periods", including "stories, drama, poetry, and literary nonfiction".

Slavery, War, and a New Birth of Freedom: 1840s-1877, a new title in the six-title series History Through Literature: American Voices, American Themes, provides insights and analysis regarding the history, literature, and cultural climate of the eras of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. It brings together informational text and primary documents that cover notable historic events and trends, authors, literary works, social movements, and cultural and artistic themes. Slavery, War, and a New Birth of Freedom begins with an interdisciplinary Chronology that identifies, defines, and places in context the notable historical events, literary works, authors' lives, and cultural landmarks of the period. This is followed by a comprehensive overview essay that summarizes the era's major historical trends, social movements, cultural and artistic themes, literary voices, and enduring works as reflections of each other and the spirit of the times. The core content comprises 20-30 articles on representative writers of the period, along with excerpts from essential literary works that highlight a historical theme, sociocultural movement, or the confluence of the two. These excerpts serve the Common Core emphasis on "informational texts from a broad range of cultures and periods", including "stories, drama, poetry, and literary nonfiction".

"This first-rate biography presents us with a heroine considerably more interesting--more original, more powerful--than the personality sentimentalists have often portrayed."
--"The New Yorker"

"Mabee chronicles Truth's life with restrained passion, refusing to fall into the traps of history by accepting what has merely been repeated...It is impressive in its depth, sparking a new interest in the woman being unveiled--a woman so many of us thought we already knew."
--"The Boston Globe"

"I am particulary impressed with the extremely high quality of the primary research and with the presentation of specific historical evidence on areas of Truth's life. . . . that have been mythologized by other writers. The book is obviously the result of years of careful and laborious sifting through antislavery newspapers and memoirs of Truth's activist associates. . . . [and] makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this woman's public life and her relationship to the reform movements of nineteenth-century America. Equally important, in a tempered and reasoned way, it presents us with an object lesson in how political movements (perhaps necessarily) attempt to appropriate. . . . historical hero figures for their own purposes.

"Sojourner Truth" will stimulate lively discussions among both academics and nonacademics interested in the history of race relations in the United States."
--Jean Humez, author of "Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress"

Many Americans have long since forgotten that there ever was slavery along the Hudson River. Yet Sojourner Truth was born a slave near the Hudson River in Ulster County, New York, in the late 1700s. Called merely Isabella as a slave, once freed she adopted the name of Sojourner Truth and became a national figure in the struggle for the emancipation of both blacks and women in Civil War America.

Despite the discrimination she suffered as both a black and a woman, Truth significantly shaped both her own life and the struggle for human rights in America. Through her fierce intelligence, her resourcefulness, and her eloquence, she became widely acknowledged as a remarkable figure during her life, and she has become one of the most heavily mythologized figures in American history.

While some of the myths about Truth have served positive functions, they have also contributed to distortions about American history, specifically about the history of blacks and women. In this landmark work, the product of years of primary research, Pulizter-Prize winning biographer Carleton Mabee has unearthed the best available sources about this remarkable woman to reconstruct her life as directly as the most original and reliable available sources permit. Included here are new insights on why she never learned to read, on the authenticity of the famous quotations attributed to her (such as Ar'n't I a woman?), her relationship to President Lincoln, her role in the abolitionist movement, her crusade to move freed slaves from the South to the North, and her life as a singer, orator, feminist and woman of faith. This is an engaging, historically precise biography that reassesses the place of Sojourner Truth--slave, prophet, legend--in American history.

Sojourner Truth is one of the most famous and most mythologized figures in American history. Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographerCarleton Mabee unearths heretofore-neglected sources and offers valuable new insights into the life of a woman who, against all odds, became a central figure in the struggle for the emancipation of slaves and women in Civil War America.

The Amistad incident, one of the few successful ship revolts in the history of enslavement, has been discussed by historians for decades, even becoming the subject of a Steven Spielberg film in 1997, which brought the story to wide audiences. But, while historians have examined the Amistad case for its role in the long history of the Atlantic, the United States and slavery, there is an oil on canvas painting of one man, Cinque, at the center of this story, an image so crucial to the continual retelling and memorialization of the Amistad story, it is difficult to think about the Amistad and not think of this image. Visual and material culture about the Amistad in the form of paintings, prints, monuments, memorials, museum exhibits, quilts and banners, began production in the late summer of 1839 and has not yet ceased. Art of the Amistad and The Portrait of Cinque is the first book to survey in total these Amistad inspired images and related objects, and to find in them shared ideals and cultural creations, but also divergent applications of the story based on intended audience and local context. Tracing the revolutionary creation of what art historian Stephen Eisenman calls "a highly individualized, noble portrait of an African man," Art of the Amistad and The Portrait of Cinque is built around visual and material culture, and thus does not use images merely as illustration, but tells its story through the wide range of images and materials presented. While the Portrait of Cinque seems to sit quietly behind Plexiglass at a local history museum, the impact of this 175-year old painting is palpable; very few portraits from the 19th century-let alone a portrait of a black man-remain a relevant part of culture as the Portrait of Cinque continues to be today. Art of the Amistad the Portrait of Cinque is about the art and artifacts that continue to inform and inspire our understanding of transatlantic history-a journey 175 years in the making.

This groundbreaking and authoritative resource reporting on the state of modern-day worldwide slavery and human trafficking has now been thoroughly updated.

It is estimated that more than 27 million slaves exist today, ranging from prostitutes in London and New York to indentured workers in Burma. The statistics are shocking. But behind each statistic is a human being--a man, woman, or child; and behind each human being is a family and a community which have been devastated or destroyed. This Immoral Trade shares the stories of some of these.

Including chapters on the causes of slavery, the history and different forms of contemporary slavery, the Christian roots of the anti-slavery movement, and three detailed case studies--on Sudan, Burma, and Uganda--the new edition also includes a special chapter on the Dalits of India and a section on human trafficking, both with arresting and disturbing case histories. It concludes with an important chapter on action readers can take.

Sharply written and carefully researched, This Immoral Trade is a powerful resource that will spur thoughtful readers to a deeper understanding of this global threat.

"This book demands the attention of all who would seek to follow in the footsteps of Wilberforce."

--Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

This volume of essays contains case studies of debt bondage covering the impact of an expanding globalized economy, increased commercialisation, colonial and post-colonial societies, and emerging economies.

Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the 'Past'? Addresses how reparations might be obtained for the legacy of the Trans Atlantic slave trade. This collection lends weight to the argument that liability is not extinguished on the death of the plaintiffs or perpetrators. Arguing that the impact of the slave trade is continuing and therefore contemporary, it maintains that this trans-generational debt remains, and must be addressed. Bringing together leading scholars, practitioners, diplomats, and activists, Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade provides a powerful and challenging exploration of the variety of available - legal, relief-type, economic-based and multi-level - strategies, and apparent barriers, to achieving reparations for slavery.

Conventional wisdom says that marriage was rare or illegal for slaves and that if African Americans married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is believed that this history explains the dysfunction of the African American family to this day. In this groundbreaking book, Frances Smith Foster shows that this common wisdom is flawed as it is based upon partial evidence and it ignores the writings African Americans created for themselves. Rather than relying on documents produced for abolitionists, the state, or other biased parties, Foster draws upon a trove of little-examined alternative sources and in so doing offers a correction to this widely held but misinformed viewpoint. The works examined include family histories, folkloric stories, organizational records, personal memoirs, sermons and especially the fascinating and varied writings published in the Afro-Protestant Press of the times. She shows that "jumping the broom" was but one of many wedding rituals and that love, marriage and family were highly valued and central to early African American society. Her book offers a provocative new understanding of a powerful belief about African American history and sheds light on the roles of memory and myth, story and history in defining contemporary society and shaping the future.

Though, historically, the chief mechanism of slavery was seen as violent abduction, this view is being adjusted to recognize the importance of financial indebtedness in creating human bondage. These essays show that debt slavery has played a crucial role in the economic history of numerous societies which continues even today.

Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves brings to life the unique contribution by French women during the early nineteenth century, a key period in the history of colonialism and slavery. The book enriches our understanding of French and Atlantic history in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary years when Haiti was menaced with the re-establishment of slavery and when class, race, and gender identities were being renegotiated. It offers in-depth readings of works by Germaine de Stael, Claire de Duras, and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. In addition to these now canonical French authors, it calls attention to the lives and works of two lesser-known but important figures-Charlotte Dard and Sophie Doin. Approaching these five women through the prism of paternal authority, Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves explores the empathy that daughters show toward blacks as well as their resistance against the oppression exercised by male colonists and other authority figures. The works by these French women antislavery writers bear significant similarities, which the book explores, with twentieth and twenty-first century Francophone texts. These women's contributions allow us to move beyond the traditional boundaries of exclusively male accounts by missionaries, explorers, functionaries, and military or political figures. They remind us of the imperative for ever-renewed gender research in the colonial archive and the need to expand conceptions of French women's writing in the nineteenth century as being a small minority corpus. Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves contributes to an understanding of colonial fiction, Caribbean writing, romanticism, and feminism. It undercuts neat distinctions between the cultures of France and its colonies and between nineteenth and twentieth-century Francophone writing."

An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and-at times-white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race-as well as on the role of religion in racial shift-in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Jamaica and Saint-Domingue were especially brutal but conspicuously successful eighteenth-century slave societies and imperial colonies. These plantation regimes were, to adopt a metaphor of the era, complex "machines," finely tuned over time by planters, merchants, and officials to become more efficient at exploiting their enslaved workers and serving their empires. Using a wide range of archival evidence, The Plantation Machine traces a critical half-century in the development of the social, economic, and political frameworks that made these societies possible. Trevor Burnard and John Garrigus find deep and unexpected similarities in these two prize colonies of empires that fought each other throughout the period. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue experienced, at nearly the same moment, a bitter feud between planters and governors, a violent conflict between masters and enslaved workers, a fateful tightening of racial laws, a steady expansion of the slave trade, and metropolitan criticism of planters' cruelty. The core of The Plantation Machine addresses the Seven Years' War and its aftermath. The events of that period, notably a slave poisoning scare in Saint-Domingue and a near-simultaneous slave revolt in Jamaica, cemented white dominance in both colonies. Burnard and Garrigus argue that local political concerns, not emerging racial ideologies, explain the rise of distinctive forms of racism in these two societies. The American Revolution provided another imperial crisis for the beneficiaries of the plantation machine, but by the 1780s whites in each place were prospering as never before-and blacks were suffering in new and disturbing ways. The result was that Jamaica and Saint-Domingue became vitally important parts of the late eighteenth-century American empires of Britain and France.

"Child Slaves in the Modern World" is the second of two volumes that examine the distinctive uses and experiences of children in slavery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This collection of previously unpublished essays exposes the global victimization of child slaves from the period of abolition of legal slavery in the nineteenth century to the human rights era of the twentieth century. It contributes to the growing recognition that the stereotypical bonded male slave was in fact a rarity. Nine of the studies are historical, with five located in Africa and three covering Latin America from the British Caribbean to Chile. One study follows the children liberated in the famous Amistad incident (1843). The remaining essays cover contemporary forms of child slavery, from prostitution to labor to forced soldiering. "Child Slaves in the Modern World" adds historical depth to the current literature on contemporary slavery, emphasizing the distinctive vulnerabilities of children, or effective equivalents, that made them particularly valuable to those who could acquire and control them. The studies also make clear the complexities of attempting to legislate or decree regulations limiting practices that appear to have been--and continue to be --ubiquitous around the world.

Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health, mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled" bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly" bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression, and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about and reactions to disability-appearing as social construction, legal definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade-highlighted deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.

First published in September 1992, the book traces the nature and development of the fundamental legal relationships among slaves, masters, and third parties. It shows how the colonial and antebellum Southern judges and legislators accommodated slavery's social relationships into the common law, and how slave law evolved in different states over time in response to social political, economic, and intellectual developments. The book states that the law of slavery in the US South treated slaves both as people and property. It reconciles this apparent contradiction by demonstrating that slaves were defined in the law as items of human property without any legal rights. When the lawmakers recognized slaves as people, they burdened slaves with added legal duties and disabilities. This epitomized in legal terms slavery's oppressive social relationships. The book also illustrates how cases in which the lawmakers recognized slaves as people legitimized slavery's inhumanity. References in the law to the legal humanity of people held as slaves are shown to be rhetorical devices and cruel ironies that regulated the relative rights of the slaves' owners and other free people that were embodied in people held as slaves. Thus, it is argued that it never makes sense to think of slave legal rights. This was so even when the lawmakers regulated the individual masters' rights to treat their slaves as they wished. These regulations advanced policies that the lawmakers perceived to be in the public interest within the context of a slave society.

In 1846 two slaves, Dred and Harriet Scott, filed petitions for their freedom in the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri. As the first true civil rights case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Dred Scott v. Sandford raised issues that have not been fully resolved despite three amendments to the Constitution and more than a century and a half of litigation. The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law presents original research and the reflections of the nation\u2019s leading scholars who gathered in St. Louis to mark the 150th anniversary of what was arguably the most infamous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision that held that African Americans \u201chad no rights\u201d under the Constitution and that Congress had no authority to alter that galvanized Americans and thrust the issue of race and law to the center of American politics. This collection of essays revisits the history of the case and its aftermath in American life and law. In a final section, the present-day justices of the Missouri Supreme Court offer their reflections on the process of judging and provide perspective on the misdeeds of their nineteenth-century predecessors who denied the Scotts their freedom.

This important collection of essays examines the history and impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World, a region stretching from Southern and Eastern Africa to the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and the Far East. Slavery studies have traditionally concentrated on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. In comparison, the Indian Ocean World slave trade has been little explored, although it started some 3,500 years before the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the present day. This volume, which follows a collection of essays The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004), examines the various abolitionist impulses, indigenous and European, in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation. The essays show that in applying definitions of slavery derived from the American model, European agents in the region failed to detect or deliberately ignored other forms of slavery, and as a result the abolitionist impulse was only partly successful with the slave trade still continuing today in many parts of the Indian Ocean World.

In her new book, well-known Africanist Suzanne Miers places modern slavery in its historical context, tracing the phenomenal development of the international anti-slavery movement over the last hundred years. She demonstrates how the problems of eradication seem greater and more intractable today than they had ever been, showing how slavery has expanded to include newer forms from 1919 to 2000, some of them crueler than the chattel slavery so familiar to the public mind. Miers describes the targets of ongoing anti-slavery campaigns, including forced labor, forced prostitution, forced marriage, the exploitation of child labor and of migrant and contract labor. She centers her story on Great Britain's efforts to suppress the slave trade since the late eighteenth century, and draws upon her extensive work in Africa, where slavery has attracted the greatest humanitarian and international attention. This book is a valuable resource for those interested in world history, slavery, race and ethnic history, international human rights, and labor in the world economy.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, in February, 1818. From these humble beginnings, Douglass went on to become a world-famous orator, newspaper editor, and champion of the rights of women and African Americans. He was the most prominent African American activist of the 19th century. He remains important in American history because he moved beyond relief at his own personal freedom to dedicating his life to the progress of his race and his country. This volume offers a short biographical exploration of Douglass' life in the broader context of the 19th century world, and pulls together some of his most important writings on slavery, civil rights, and political issues. Bolstered by the series website, which provides instructors with more images and documents, as well as targeted links to further research, Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman gives the student of American history a fully-rounded glimpse into the world inhabited by this great figure.

Human trafficking, and the related problems of organised crime and prostitution, has become a serious problem for post-Soviet countries since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Human trafficking has a major impact on the countries of origin, the destination countries and the countries of transit, and is a concern for those studying population and migration, economics, politics, international relations and security studies. This book examines human trafficking from post-Soviet countries, exploring the full extent of the problem and discussing countermeasures, both local and at the global level, and considering the problem in all its aspects. It focuses in particular on the experiences of the Baltic Sea region, setting out the nature of organised crime and the full range of threats against society.

The public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, which some years ago could be observed especially in North America, has slowly emerged into a transnational phenomenon now encompassing Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and even Asia - allowing the populations of African descent, organized groups, governments, non-governmental organizations and societies in these different regions to individually and collectively update and reconstruct the slave past.

This edited volume examines the recent transnational emergence of the public memory of slavery, shedding light on the work of memory produced by groups of individuals who are descendants of slaves. The chapters in this book explore how the memory of the enslaved and slavers is shaped and displayed in the public space not only in the former slave societies but also in the regions that provided captives to the former American colonies and European metropoles. Through the analysis of exhibitions, museums, monuments, accounts, and public performances, the volume makes sense of the political stakes involved in the phenomenon of memorialization of slavery and the slave trade in the public sphere.

This biography, written by Booker T. Washington, one of most important post-Civil War African-American thinkers, is an account of the life and career of Frederick Douglass. The biographical account is set within a nation struggling to solve one of the most excruciating social problems that any modern people faced--slavery. This volume encompasses the experiences of Frederick Douglass as a slave and then as a public man, through the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, and the period of reconstruction. Douglass's fame as a speaker was secure. His position as the champion of an oppressed race was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it was unique. From the blight of slavery, Douglass emerged, passed through, and triumphed over the lingering prejudice that he encountered as a freeman. Like the author of his biography, Douglass seized his place in history. His life is an epic, one that finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality. Douglass was a role model to the author, and his early narrative was a guide to black and white people alike. Among the subjects covered are the Genesis of the Anti-Slavery Agitation, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground Railway, the American Colonization Society, the Conflict in Kansas for Free Soil, the John Brown Raid, the Civil War, the Enlistment of Colored Troops, and Reconstruction.