book review: American Slavery, American Freedom
American Slavery, American Freedom
by. Edmund S. Morgan
The first thing I notice about a history book is how fast it reads, and this one ready pretty fast – I’m guessing some of that is because an average of 1/4 of each page was filled by citations/annotations – most of which I could skip – but even beyond that it was written in an accessible manner and moved through it pretty quickly as these things go.
This book was basically a history of Virginia, with focus on the social and political constructs that paved the way for slavery. You don’t get to the actual system of slavery until page 275/390ish so… yeah there’s a lot of other buildup.
Even with the focus on Virginia, the book wasn’t as boring as I would have expected. The writing style was clear and engaging – and the non-tiny font probably didn’t hurt ;p.
So yeah, not so much focus on slavery itself but there’s a lot of good foundation here – I think when I get to something more specific to slavery itself, this laid some really solid groundwork. Stuff that should be common knowledge by now – like the early bonds between white servants and slaves, and the legal and institutional systems the slaveholders enacted to drive the two lower classes apart and solidify the slave caste’s role at the dead bottom of the social ladder. It’s good to be reminded that the slaveholding lawmakers knew exactly what they were doing when they institutionalized racism.
It’s also interesting to think about the mental circles the founding fathers (a good chunk of whom where Virginian) had to run themselves in in order to justify slavery while at the same time espousing freedom and liberty.
Another thing worth thinking about is the way history has been driven by the wealthy/top classes and their strategies of dealing with “the problem of the poor”….
One of the most fascinating things to study, in my opinion, is the New Amsterdam era. As an African, you went from being just another indentured servant or whathaveyou to the suddenness of your humanity being denied. I think that must have literally destroyed psyches, like a sudden anomie.
But I’m fascinated by weird stuff.
It wasn’t just there. There were free blacks in Virginia before slavery. I’m curious what happened to them – did they flee? Were they then enslaved?
Thee section on why it was so important to keep white women from having children with non-whites (and not so much the other way around) was informative as well. The fact that they spent so much brainspace and planned so specifically around trying to avoid the confusion that would result from blacks born free just makes it even more revolting.
And in case anyone’s honestly wondering – Canada really is America Jr.