Race And Revolution By Nash-A Look Back At Slavery Abolition
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Race And Revolution By Nash-A Look Back At Slavery Abolition
Race and Revolution, Gary B. Nash
Author Biography and Introduction to his Works
We are often taught in high school that colonial society was somehow ignorant of the horrors of slavery, and that slaves themselves were too ignorant to know anything else. This complete falsehood is addressed in Gary Nash's book Race and Revolution. The book tells much of the truth about slavery during the American Revolution. Nash shows that Americans lost their desire to constitutionally free slaved African Americans. Perhaps much of this blame is to be laid upon Northern leaders. Nash further addresses how the slaves responded to the hostile whites who refused to accept them as equals in their role in the new Republic. Throughout the book these excerpts and opinions are presented as essays which grew out of the Merrill Jensen Lectures in Constitutional Studies presented at the University of Wisconsin in 1988.
Summary of Contents of Book
Race and Revolution by Nash addresses an issue that has beleaguered American society, both politically and socially almost since the first colonists arrived four hundred years ago. Slavery has been an eccentric topic of discussion in many realms of life for decades. Most Americans focus on the Revolutionary period when addressing slavery and further the antebellum, civil war and reconstruction period because we are taught that in institutions of higher learning. “Nash instead focuses on the decade leading up to and the decades following the revolutionary war.” (Berryman, 2009). Was it the Northerner’s who has less interest in the slaves because they were not tied to their labour force who promote the institution of slavery; or was it the political leaders who fought so diligently to bring the colonies away from the British reign? In the second essay Nash discusses his perceived reasons for failure of the abolitionist movement at a time when it was most evident that success would occur. A central focus of his attack is to whom the...