Slavery in the United States

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Transaction Publishers - 165 páginas

Slavery 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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Contenido

The New World and Slavery
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
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Página 86 - Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion...
Página 58 - South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made,— what is more than either,— they have made a nation.
Página 86 - That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...
Página 86 - ... that on the first day of january in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the united states shall be then thenceforward and forever free and the executive government of the united states including the military and naval authority thereof will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons...
Página 86 - States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, In any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
Página 108 - Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you." I reflected much on this passage, and prayed daily for light on this subject— As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit spoke to me, saying "Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.
Página 86 - And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
Página 89 - The second, when the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slave, and the judge shall deem proper to pronounce, besides the penalty established for such cases, that the slave shall be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the reach of the power which his master has abused.
Página 86 - ... that the executive will on the first day of january aforesaid by proclamation designate the states and parts of states if any in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the united states and the fact that any state or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the congress of the united states by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated shall in the absence of...

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Louis Filler, prior to his retirement, served as professor of American civilization at Antioch College.

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