An accessible and revealing, against-the-grain look at the twists
and turns both of owning and being a slave in the 19th-century and
of the business of researching, revising, and writing history.
Using the most traditional and time-honored tools of historical
investigation, Freehling (History/SUNY Buffalo) tells compelling
stories of how and why the Civil War happened. Without
sentimentality for Dixieland plantations or an ideologically driven
discussion of the evils of slavery and other oppressions, the
author demonstrates the need for historical research and writing
that takes into account the points of view of all historical
agents, including white women; poor, white ethnics; Native
Americans, and African-Americans, male and female, slave and free.
Rather than dramatic military battles and presidential
proclamations, Freehling highlights what was happening in local
communities and in state legislatures, demonstrating throughout how
Northern desire for white-only republics, as much as Southern
desire for continued slave-owning, fueled the continuation of
slavery in spite of America's rhetoric of freedom and equality. By
not letting anyone off the hook of historical responsibility
(including Lincoln and Jefferson, who both thought of
African-Americans as racially inferior and incapable of living
freely among whites), the author dramatically complicates and
enriches the texture of 19th-century American history. Perhaps best
of all, he gives an insider's account of historical research,
showing the hard work or sifting through mountains of material to
find the few gems that after our understanding of the past.
Freehling casts light on the murkiness of the antebellum American
past and shows how close we are to, and how far we are from,
understanding something of the fullness of American history. This
is a well-written, mature collection of essays that deserves a wide
readership. (Kirkus Reviews)
This collection of essays deals with the question of slavery, and how the South in particular responded to the problem. Essays deal with subjects such as the Constitution and slavery, slave rebellion (Denmark Vesey Uprising), attempts to banish all blacks to Africa, attempts to expand slavery in the United States and overseas, and the division in the South over whether to secede from the Union or not.
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