Slavery's ghost : the problem of freedom in the age of emancipation / Richard Follett, Eric Foner, Walter Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Follett, Richard J., 1968-

Contributor:

Foner, Eric, 1943-

Johnson, Walter, 1967-

Series:

Marcus Cunliffe lecture series

The Marcus Cunliffe lecture series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enslaved persons--Emancipation--United States.

Enslaved persons.

Enslaved persons--Emancipation.

Identity (Psychology).

History.

Plantation owners.

Slaveholders.

African Americans--Race identity.

Freed persons.

Social conditions.

Slavery.

Psychological aspects.

Slavery--Social aspects.

United States.

Slavery--Social aspects--United States--History.

Slavery--United States--Psychological aspects--History.

African Americans--History--1863-1877.

African Americans.

Freed persons--United States--Social conditions.

African Americans--Race identity--History--19th century.

Slaveholders--Southern States--History--19th century.

Plantation owners--United States--History--19th century.

Identity (Psychology)--United States--History--19th century.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

viii119 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Summary:

President Abraham Lincoln freed millions of slaves in the South in 1863, rescuing them, as history tells us, from a brutal and inhuman existence and making the promise of freedom and equal rights. This is a moment to celebrate and honor, to be sure, but what of the darker, more troubling side of this story? Slavery's Ghost explores the dire, debilitating, sometimes crushing effects of slavery on race relations in American history.

In three conceptually wide-ranging and provocative essays, the authors assess the meaning of freedom for enslaved and free Americans in the decades before and after the Civil War. They ask important and challenging questions: How did slaves and freedpeople respond to the promise and reality of emancipation? How committed were white southerners to the principle of racial subjugation? And in what ways can we best interpret the actions of enslaved and free Americans during slavery and Reconstruction? Collectively, these essays offer fresh approaches to questions of local political power, the determinants of individual choices, and the discourse that shaped and defined the history of black freedom.

Written by three prominent historians of the period, Slavery's Ghost forces readers to think critically about the way we study the past, the depth of racial prejudice, and how African Americans won and lost their freedom in nineteenth-century America. Book jacket.

Contents:

Agency : a ghost story / Walter Johnson

Abraham Lincoln, colonization, and the rights of Black Americans / Eric Foner

Legacies of enslavement : plantation identities and the problem of freedom / Richard Follett.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contains:

Follett, Richard J., 1968- Legacies of enslavement.

Foner, Eric, 1943- Abraham Lincoln, colonization, and the rights of Black America.

Johnson, Walter, 1967- Agency.

ISBN:

9781421402352

1421402351

9781421402369

142140236X

OCLC:

706677569