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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 30
... Institution " Post - Revolutionary Eras 5. Stabilizing the Slave System 4. Effects of Revolutionary and 3 11 17 20 23 6. Spanish and American Slavery Compared 26 7. Slavery as a " Positive Good " 30 8. Slavery as a Way of Life 36 9. The ...
... institution . His studies premised slavery as an institution , a form of organization , to the annoyance of some of his graduate students , and were not offered to a larger public . Professor Morris made little effort to confront the ...
... institution meant to the country at large : why it flourished as it did , and how it came to be opposed and overthrown . True , Daniel Webster was covered with obloquy in the North for coming before the United States Senate in 1850 to ...
... Institution ( 1956 ) retraced Phillips's course , and more critically reviewed its workings for a less empathetic era . More recently , Eugene D. Genovese , The Political Economy of Slavery ( 1965 ) pondered the workings of slavery as ...
... institutions of this ancient thread in human affairs ? We would be poorer for a history of philosophy without Plato , a ... institution in Biblical circumstances , more so than among the much admired ancient Greeks . Yet the most present ...
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 |