Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900): 24

Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900): 24

by PatrickRael (Author)

Synopsis

Why did it take so long to end slavery in the United States, and what did it mean that the nation existed eighty-eight years as a house divided against itself, as Abraham Lincoln put it? The decline of slavery throughout the Atlantic world was a protracted affair, says Patrick Rael, but no other nation endured anything like the United States. Here the process took from 1777, when Vermont wrote slavery out of its state constitution, to 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery nationwide.

Rael immerses readers in the mix of social, geographic, economic, and political factors that shaped this unique American experience. He not only takes a far longer view of slavery's demise than do those who date it to the rise of abolitionism in 1831, he also places it in a broader Atlantic context. We see how slavery ended variously by consent or force across time and place and how views on slavery evolved differently between the centers of European power and their colonial peripheries-some of which would become power centers themselves.

Rael shows how African Americans played the central role in ending slavery in the United States. Fuelled by new Revolutionary ideals of self-rule and universal equality-and on their own or alongside abolitionists-both slaves and free blacks slowly turned American opinion against the slave interests in the South. Secession followed, and then began the national bloodbath that would demand slavery's complete destruction.

$40.44

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 400
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 30 Apr 2015

ISBN 10: 0820348392
ISBN 13: 9780820348391

Media Reviews
In terms of its chronological and geographic scope, Eighty-Eight Years' rivals are few and distinguished...Eighty-Eight Years will prove of great value to scholars in the field of slavery and abolition, as well as those looking to catch up on trends in the field.--John Craig Hammond Reviews in History
Author Bio
Patrick Rael is a professor of history at Bowdoin College and one of the general editors of the Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series. His books include Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North and African-American Activism before the Civil War: The Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North. Rael is an Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer, 2010-2015.