Research Catalog

Title

The problem of slavery in the age of emancipation / David Brion Davis.

Author

Davis, David Brion.

Publication

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvii, 422 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"From the revered historian, the long-awaited conclusion of the magisterial history of slavery and emancipation in Western culture that has been nearly fifty years in the making. David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, and in this final volume in his monumental trilogy on slavery in Western culture he offers highly original, authoritative, and penetrating insight into what slavery and emancipation meant to Americans. He explores how the Haitian revolution respectively terrified and inspired white and black Americans, and offers a surprising analysis of the complex and misunderstood significance of colonization-the project to move freed slaves back to Africa-to members of both races and all political persuasions. Davis vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery, as well as the generally unrecognized importance of freed slaves to abolition. And he explores the influence of religion on American ideas about emancipation. Above all, he captures the ways in which America wrestled with the knotty problem of moving forward into an age of emancipation. This is a landmark work: a brilliant conclusion to one of the great works of American history"--

Subjects

• Antislavery movements
• Slavery
• Free African Americans
• History
• Great Britain
• HISTORY > Social History
• Antislavery movements > Great Britain > History > 19th century
• Slaves > Emancipation > United States
• Africa
• Slavery > United States > History > 19th century
• American Colonization Society
• 1800-1899
• HISTORY > United States > 19th Century
• SOCIAL SCIENCE > Ethnic Studies > African American Studies
• United States
• Antislavery movements > United States > History > 19th century
• Free African Americans > History > 19th century
• African Americans > Colonization > Africa

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-403) and index.

Language (note)

• Text in English.

Awards (note)

• Long listed for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, 2014.

Contents

Discovering animalization -- Some evidence of animalization -- 1. Some meanings of slavery and emancipation: dehumanization, animalization, and free soil : The meaning of animalization, part I ; The meaning of animalization, part II ; The search for the animalized slave ; Domestication and internalization -- 2. The first emancipations: freedom and dishonor : Self-emancipation: Haiti as a turning point ; Freedmen and slaves ; Freedman's rights ; Loss of mastery ; The "horrors of Haiti" -- 3. Colonizing blacks, part I: migration and deportation : The exodus paradigm ; Precedents: exiles ; Precedents: the displaced -- 4. Colonizing blacks, part II: the American Colonization Society and Americo-Liberians : Liberating Liberia -- 5. Colonizing blacks, part III: from Martin Delany to Henry Highland Garnet and Marcus Garvey : Nationalism -- 6. Colonizationalist ideology: Leonard Bacon and "irremediable degradation" : Bacon's "report" of 1823 ; The paradox of sin and "irremediable degradation" ; Some black response -- 7. From opposing colonization to immediate abolition : Paul Cuffe and early proposals for emigration ; James Forten and black reactions to the American Colonization Society ; The search for black identity and emigration to Haiti ; Russwurm, Cornish, and Walker ; Blacks and Garrison -- 8. Free blacks as the key to slave emancipation : Recognition of the issue ; Abolitionist addresses to free African Americans ; David Walker and overcoming slave dehumanization ; James McCune Smith and Jefferson's "What further is to be done with these people?" -- 9. Fugitive slaves, free soil, and the question of violence: Frederick Douglass as a fugitive ; The Underground Railroad and runaway slaves ; Harriet Jacobs as a female fugitive ; Fugitive slaves and the law -- 10. The great experiment: jubilee, responses, and failure : An eschatological event and America's barriers ; The enactment of British emancipation ; Some American responses to British emancipation ; From Joseph John Gurney to the issue of failure -- 11. The British mystique: black abolitionists in Britain, the leader of the Industrial Revolution and center of "wage slavery" : Frederick Douglass confronts the world ; African Americans embrace the mother country ; The problems of race, dehumanization, and wage slavery ; Joseph Sturge, Frederick Douglass, and the Chartists: the decline and expansion of antislavery in the 1850s.

Call Number

Sc E 14-565

ISBN

• 9780307269096
• 0307269094
• 9780385351652
• 0385351658

LCCN

2013032893

OCLC

862575021

Author

Davis, David Brion.

Title

The problem of slavery in the age of emancipation / David Brion Davis.

Publisher

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-403) and index.

Language

Text in English.

Awards

Long listed for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, 2014.

Chronological Term

1800-1899

Research Call Number

Sc E 14-565

JFE 15-7769