Slavery, Resistance, Freedom (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock contains six excellent essays that cover slavery and American history, with an emphasis on memory, and how the idea of freedom as represented here impacts our understanding of American democracy. From the publisher:
This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America’s top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged–indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office.
I will be utilizing this excellent book in my A.P. United States history class this coming year. In particular, the essay “The Quest for Freedom: Runaway Slaves and the Plantation South,” by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger. This essay dealt with some interesting topics that could be nicely presented in a lecture or discussion. How the relationships between slave and master, and the measures to which slaves would go to resist slavery, but also the interesting and unspoken rules that some masters had. Neither slave nor master is a caricature in this excellent piece. Slave owners are not always cruel, and sometimes had moral standards. There was a dynamic and layered relationship among slave and master. To be sure, slavery was a brutal and arduous affair and when slaves resisted and escaped, they were usually dealt with severely. So within this essay there are a lot interesting facts, and some great talking points.
-C
