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
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... Continuing Problem of Slavery : The Case of 151 Liberia 154 32. The Continuing Problem of Slavery : The United Nations 157 RECOMMENDED READING 159 INDEX 163 Introduction to the Transaction Edition : Slavery as Labor System vi CONTENTS.
... labor studies , the late Professor Richard B. Morris probed sla- very as an 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 ...
... labor in the fields or behind oars . One is reminded of the chances of war af- fecting Rome itself . Hannibal destroyed its elite forces after coming down from the Alps . Had he not hesitated , giving the desperate Romans a chance to ...
... labor interest which entered into a long and massive struggle for freedom from a new slavery . The old slavery had involved the differences between animals and humans , their relations , too , for that matter . The new slavery brought ...
The wants of industry were apparently endless ; but so were the wants of labor . There were industrial " barons , " and also labor " barons . " Some- one asked Samuel Gompers , an early labor organizer , " what was labor's goal ...
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 |