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The Civil War forced America finally to confront the contradiction between its founding values and human slavery. At the center of this historic confrontation was Abraham Lincoln. By the time this Illinois politician had risen to the office of president, the dilemma of slavery had expanded to the question of all African Americans' future. In this fascinating new book Paul Escott considers the evolution of the president's thoughts on race in relation to three other, powerful - and often conflicti...

Behind the Scenes is the life story of Elizabeth Keckley, a shrewd entrepreneur who, while enslaved, raised enough money to purchase freedom for herself and her son. Keckley moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a seamstress and dressmaker for the wives of influential politicians. She eventually became a close confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln. Several years after President Lincoln's assassination, when Mrs. Lincoln's financial situation had worsened, Keckley helped organize an auction of...

During the age of empire, European and American colonists perpetrated one of history's most monstrous crimes: slavery. Millions of Africans were subjected to forced abduction, misery and death as part of the brutal Atlantic slave trade. However, since the perpetrators are long dead, should current generations make reparation for this historic injustice? In this book, Janna Thompson uses three case studies - France's treatment of Haiti, Britain's role in the African slave trade, and the plight...

One of the Coast Guard's great heroes and the secret he kept hidden"This is a book of adventure that tells how one man shaped the Alaskan frontier at a crucial time in American history."--Vincent William Patton, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, retired"Diligent research and precise writing reveal the realities of race relations in nineteenth-century America, as well as the dangers, loneliness, and complex relationships of life at sea in that era."--Bernard C. Nalty, author of Stren...

The Materiality of Freedom uses the lens of archaeology to provide original perspectives on the painful Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras by studying the material culture inherent in the struggles for racial equality in America and the Caribbean. Editor Jodi A. Barnes and a cast of notable scholars focus their essays on racial and social strife experienced by African Americans seeking to exercise their newly won civil rights following the Civil War. By studying material objects in a variety of co...

In August 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner led a bloody uprising that took the lives of some fifty-five white people-men, women, and children - shocking the South. Nearly as many black people, all told, perished in the rebellion and its aftermath. Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County presents important new evidence about the violence and the community in which it took place, shedding light on the insurgents and victims and reinterpreting the most important account of...

Lincoln's significance in the history of slavery and emancipation, the Union's preservation and the formation of a new national vision is unquestionably crucial to comprehending the antebellum and Civil War periods in American history. This is a one-of-a-kind hybrid reference work that combines chronology with almost 400 primary source papers to contextualize Lincoln's life within his historical era. These written materials serve as the foundation upon which historians can construct a picture o...

On Slavery's Border is a bottom-up examination of how slavery and slaveholding were influenced by both the geography and the scale of the slaveholding enterprise. Missouri's strategic access to important waterways made it a key site at the periphery of the Atlantic world. By the time of statehood in 1821, people were moving there in large numbers, especially from the upper South, hoping to replicate the slave society they'd left behind. Diane Mutti Burke focuses on the Missouri counties located...