That intractable question - to what extent did the slaves
accommodate, to what extent resist? - gets perhaps its most
discerning treatment here: their response, Willie Lee Rose brings
out, was a matter of learning, in childhood, "how to accommodate
and when to resist." That, however, is only a by-product of one of
these landmark essays - many of them celebrated addresses
previously unpublished, all of them enhanced by editor Freehling's
acute sense of their intent and original import. (Rose's work was
cut short by a severe stroke in 1978 - a loss to American
historical studies on a par with Richard Hofstadter's early death.)
"The Impact of the Revolution on the Black Population" argues for
the birth of the antislavery movement in the ideals of the
Declaration and their ferment, thereafter, within the black
population. "The Domestication of Domestic Slavery" is central to
Rose's stress on the institution's evolution: "In earlier, harsher
times, [slaves] had been seen as luckless, unfortunate barbarians.
Now they were treated as children expected never to grow up." Then,
following the account of childhood acculturation, comes (from
Rose's prize-winning Rehearsal for Reconstruction) an example of
methodology-made-art: "Fall came late to South Carolina in 1861. .
. The Negroes too had heard the guns, and some had hidden in the
swamps and in the fields, crouching low between the corn rows.
Others had sensed their power for the first time and had suddenly
stood their ground before their masters, impervious to cajolery and
threats that the Yankees would sell them to Cuba." The two
succeeding essays focus on Reconstruction: the southern planter's
"internal conflict" between the (God-given, popularly-endorsed)
overthrow of slavery and his own conviction of the ex-slaves'
incapacity; the black freedmen's obscure political "trail" (and the
difficulty, for a historian, of positioning it). Next: a group of
searching essay-reviews - of Alex Haley's Roots, of books on
Frederick Douglass and John Brown (and the problem of armed
revolt), on US vs. Brazilian and British colonial slavery. And, for
anyone with an interest in history-as-it's written: an assessment
of slave studies, from Stampp to Genevese and Fogel-and-Engerman;
reflections on the interpretation of primary sources; a model
bibliographic introduction. All told: meticulous scholarship,
luminous writing, exacting analysis. (Kirkus Reviews)
Unknown function: Edited by William H. Freehling
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