Slavery in the United States

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Routledge, 2018 M04 24 - 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 "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." 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.

 

Contenido

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
PREFACE
SLAVERY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
The New World and Slavery
Negroes and Slavery
The Peculiar Institution
Effects of Revolutionary and PostRevolutionary Eras
Stabilizing the Slave System
Slavery as a Positive Good
Slavery as a Way of Life
The Challenge of Freedom
The Verdict of
The Continuing Debate
READINGS
Andrew Jackson Seeks a Runaway
His Life and Outlook

Spanish and American Slavery Compared
James Fenimore Cooper On Slavery in New York

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Acerca del autor (2018)

Louis Filler

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