Slavery in the United StatesSlavery in the United States clarifies the institution of slavery in its historical context. Filler avoids the all too prevalent literary attitude of either treating slavery as an unmitigated nightmare from the past, or regarding it as a way of life which warmly repaid slave and slaveholder. He does not reduce the issue to one of fact and figures, nor does he inject endless hypotheses and analogues. Rather, this finely etched volume encompasses the human implications of slavery and its practices. It emphasizes the distinguished and disreputable elements on both sides of the slavery relationship, and in every part of the United States. Slavery offers peculiar challenges to the student of American life, past and present. It is unrealistic to avoid the human implications of slavery and its practice. It is equally unhelpful to assume glib and partial viewpoints with respect to so all-embracing a system as slavery became. The cause of progress, no less than social science, is not advanced by indifference to patent facts. The civil libertarian who romanticizes black people indiscriminately, and lumps Jefferson Davis with Simon Legree may win popularity with enthusiasts and ideologues. But they will soon find themselves quaint and outmoded. The author reminds us that â the safest approach to slavery is to determine what the institution meant to the country at large; why it flourished as it did, and how it came to be opposed and overthrown.â The work includes high quality often neglected readings that permit the reader to form his or her own views. It reveals the best writing on all aspects of the slavery issue, as well as analytic summations by contemporary historians and social researchers. |
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... Enslavement 14. Colonization and the Free Negro 15. Colonization and the Slave 101 104 106 16. The Folklore of Rebellion : The Appeal of Nat Turner 108 17. A Foreign View : Charles Dickens on Slavery 18. Frances Anne Kemble : An ...
... enslavement , more likely to fall back upon it to ease their own labors , essentially to exploit those of weak mental or physical make - up as individuals or groups on various grounds of ethnic traits , strange and alien . They might so ...
... enslave " them in a sense . In some cases , such as war , competitors can be forced by government to " cooperate , " so that their common war can move on . Then , high position , even the highest , can be reduced , as Shakespeare has it ...
... enslave- ment , however it was defined , taking on the rights of the seignior of the manor or the humanity of the master . There was a special power and question of civilization in American slavery . It took in such disparate figures as ...
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Contents
3 | |
Negroes and Slavery | 11 |
The Peculiar Institution | 17 |
Effects of Revolutionary and PostRevolutionary Eras | 20 |
Stabilizing the Slave System | 23 |
Spanish and American Slavery Compared | 26 |
Slavery as a Positive Good | 30 |
Slavery as a Way of Life | 36 |
The Free Negro His Enslavement | 101 |
Colonization and the Free Negro | 104 |
Colonization and the Slave | 106 |
The Folklore of Rebellion The Appeal of Nat Turner | 108 |
A Foreign View Charles Dickens on Slavery | 112 |
Frances Anne Kemble An Insiders View of Slavery? | 115 |
William Wells Brown Pictures of Slave Life | 118 |
William Still Chronicles of Enslavement | 121 |
The Challenge of Freedom | 42 |
The Verdict of War | 54 |
The Continuing Debate | 60 |
Andrew Jackson Seeks a Runaway | 71 |
Indian Slavers | 72 |
The Slave Trader His Life and Outlook | 76 |
James Fenimore Cooper On Slavery in New York4 | 79 |
Frederick Law Olmsted An Antislavery Opinion in North Carolina | 82 |
Emancipation Proclamation What It Did and Did Not Do | 85 |
Codes and the Negro Their Purpose and Variety | 88 |
The Northern Response to Freedmen | 90 |
Conditions Affecting Slavery Illinois and the West Indies | 91 |
A Slave Defends Slavery | 93 |
John J Audubon Encounters a Runaway | 95 |
John C Calhoun Responds to Abolitionists | 98 |
Harriet Beecher Stowe The Sale of Uncle Tom | 124 |
The Border States A Slaves Wedding | 128 |
Slavery for Northerners A Proposal | 131 |
The Proslavery Answer to British Criticism | 133 |
Henry Clay What Is to Be Done? | 136 |
Frederick Douglass on The Slavery Party | 139 |
Hinton Rowan Helper Slavery Renounced | 142 |
Emancipation The Confederate Program | 145 |
Slavery in Retrospect The Freedman | 148 |
Slavery in Retrospect Henry A Wise Assayed | 151 |
The Continuing Problem of Slavery The Case of Liberia | 154 |
The Continuing Problem of Slavery The United Nations | 157 |
RECOMMENDED READING | 159 |
INDEX | 163 |