Reddit mentions: The best us abolition of slavery history books

Napolitano really sneaks in the "Lincoln tried to arm the slaves" line in the interview without much context. I was hoping to tackle this, but I'm not sure where he is coming from.

Can we speak to what position he might be making this claim from?

Lincoln dispels any notion of support for John Brown in his famous Cooper Union Speech on Feb. 27, 1860. There were some prominent Northern supporters and funders of Brown's (a few of whom fled to Canada after the raid on Harper's Ferry), but attempting to tie their ambitions of an armed slave uprising to Lincoln would be tenuous at best.

My reading and research into Brown hasn't shown any other connection there aside from the strange linkage of Lincoln's love of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was written to the tune of "John Brown's Body," which was written by Julia Ward Howe after visiting Lincoln in Washington. Howe was wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, who himself was one of the "Secret Six" funders of Brown's raid. This New York Times post recognizes this connection as fairly ironic given Lincoln's previous attempts to distance himself from Brown and concedes that Lincoln appears ignorant to the tune's origin. It's more of an interesting factoid than anything else.

More information of the Howes and Brown's supporters:
> Nora Titone, My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Free Press, 2011).

As an aside, there does appear to be well-researched documentation for the Confederacy's attempts to arm slaves. Near the end of the war as the military situation worsened for the South, there was support for allowing slaves to earn their freedom by fighting for the Confederacy. The first all-black company was formed in Richmond in late-March of 1865, then the capital city fell to the Union a week later.

Bruce Levine has written about this in "Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War." A quick journal review of his work is here for those interested.

I love your question! /u/dick_long_wigwam and /u/ty_bombadil seem to have most of your "Golden Age" books covered, so here's my offering:

If you want to get into the "Belle Epoch" that Adriana finds so arresting, you ought to read The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. It offers a brilliant look into the Paris of the 19th century and features a brilliant cast of historical American and French characters.

Happy Reading!

This is the subject of a very interesting book by Bruce Levine, called Confederate Emancipation.

The skinny of it is that both the idea of emancipating the slaves as a war necessity (whether to help encourage European recognition or else to try and endear the slaves into joining the southern cause en masse) and of training slaves to fight for the Confederate Army, whether or not freedom was part of that enlistment, was talked about almost from day one of the war. However, it was only ever seriously supported by a fairly small minority among Confederates and in all cases encountered very, very strong opposition from most confederates. As things turned badly for the Confederacy during the war, Jefferson Davis began trying very hard to enlist black troops for the south and was heavily resisted. Ultimately a very small number of black troops were trained at the very end of the war, but they never saw actual combat. Predictably, black volunteers, even with the incentive of freedom, always came up short, and the number who actually got into uniforms is too small to be significant in any way. IIRC barely a company of black confederate troops was formed, but I can't confirm that at the moment.

That being said, black slaves were used by the army for support roles from day one as well. They tended soldiers in the camps, built defenses, and fulfilled many other roles, except fighting and soldiering. This led to the whole incident at Fort Monroe and the Confiscation Acts, which are quite worth researching.

> Nagel argues that the alt-right has abandoned the religious basis early conservatism is built on. Instead, they deal in wholesale power exchanges with no underlying "truth" to form as the bedrock

Many would argue that the religious basis of conservatism was always just a mask for power. Cobb's Away Down South, Faust's The Ideology of Slavery, Fox-Genovese's The Mind of the Master Class and many other works show how inextricably the religion in the South was bound up in justifying and preserving slavery. George Wallace's opposition to desegregation was also heavily based on his religious convictions. Same for the Klan, both the 19th century and 20th century incarnations.

So whether the alt-right represents a departure from a fundamental aspect of conservatism, vs just the putting aside of a pious facade once it was no longer necessary, is a matter of some contention. There are of course strains of religion that were not about power, but about justice and compassion, but that strain was always picked up by the liberals. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, or even, more currently, the faith of Jimmy Carter.

Edit (added):

Consider who is often offered as more or less the poster-boy for intellectual, dignified conservatism, William F. Buckley. Here is a 1965 debate between Buckley and James Baldwin. It's about an hour in length, but I would challenge anyone to watch it and conclude that Buckley's position was about principle, rather than privilege or power. The alt-right may be more crass and sophomoric at times, but I don't think they represent much that is actually new. They represent new tactics and marketing, but not new values.

>Really ? Can you give me one example where in any social science women are treated as the majority group.

academia is much larger than social science.

here is one example:

>The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Majority-Finds-Its-Past-Placing/dp/0807856061/

Another which talks about demographics which is a social science... Any form of geography that deals with demographics is a social science and will talk about statistics and women are in fact a statistical majority in the UK.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11475-eng.htm

>In the statistical sense it is definitely true. Feel free to look at the number of women in position in power. I think you mean that numerically women are not a minority. Which is true. But when people talk about minorities in the context of social groups, it almost never means in a numerical sense.

Nobody mentioned women in power. They were only mentioned as a percentage of population. If you want to say women are a minority of MPs, CEOs etc, then that is true, but you MUST specify the specific situation. Just to say women are a minority generally implies to most people in terms of total population, which is not true in the UK.

>I think you mean that numerically women are not a minority

Of course I do, people in this country do, I don't think I know anyone in my social or professional life who doesn't use minority to use statistical minority (I did a STEM PhD).

>But when people talk about minorities in the context of social groups, it almost never means in a numerical sense.

Outside of certain social sciences (not including geography) it is uncommon for people to do that.

>Everybody that would discuss this with any BASIC KNOWLEDGE would understand that it's perfectly valid to describe women as minority group. Give that you apparently find Oxford reliable may I suggest the dictionary of sociology

Basic knowledge of sociology as used by a particular part of the field..... Outside of that field, people would not get what your are saying as most people only deal with statistic majorities.

It seems the term minority has been used to equate/compare women to statistical minority groups. As someone who deals with numbers on a regular basis, this terminology is rather counter intuitive. It is strange to use it when the exact opposite is true statistically.

I never said the war wasn't about slavery primarily. I'd recommend this book. It's very good.

Also thanks for doing the legwork for me and giving me access to the exact numbers of slaves in places like Kentucky.

Read this book: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Long, but amazing and totally worth it.

Also, In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period

I highly, highly recommend Bound for Canaan if you want to understand the human aspect of the movement. It reads sort of like a good Atlantic story: not shying away from historical detail or complexity, but also using and following interesting individuals to highlight whatever broader point he is making.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

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amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

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For a historical perspective, I highly recommend the book Americans in Paris by David McCullugh to see how France was a major magnet for Americans in the 19th century https://www.amazon.com/Greater-Journey-Americans-Paris/dp/1416571779

As others mentioned, several Founding Fathers were influenced by French culture and philosophies.

Today, French cooking is considered a prestigious style, and French luxury brands are still popular in the United States.

> The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Majority-Finds-Its-Past-Placing/dp/0807856061/

May I guess you never read the book ? She was a radical socialist and feminist, with the title almost surely like this because it plays on the contradiction of women being a minority group despite being a numerical majority.

>Gerda Lerner. One of the most influential feminist historians, Lerner is often credited with being the first to offer college courses in women's history. Lerner was a giant in her field: she rose to prominence in the 1960s, a time of tremendous expansion in the field of history. During this time, social history became popular: increasingly historians began to pay attention to every-day people, including women, the African Americans, the poor, and other minorities, as opposed to the ''great men'' embodied in generals like Robert E. Lee. and politicians like Thomas Jefferson.

You can read maybe The Creation of Patriarchy :P To make sure that she would probably have no issue with describing women as a minority group and would surely understand.

>Of course I do, people in this country do, I don't think I know anyone in my social or professional life who doesn't use minority to use statistical minority (I did a STEM PhD).

Why do you use statistical majority, when you mean numerical majority ? This is the second time now and it's confusing me a bit. And again, sure you and your friends might use the colloquial definition of minority. Which is totally fine, but pretending that women can't be called a minority is just wrong and shows that you have no understanding of minority groups and the social sciences.

>Basic knowledge of sociology as used by a particular part of the field..... Outside of that field, people would not get what your are saying as most people only deal with statistic majorities.

Is what we are discussing right now related to the social sciences or more to numerics ? Also you are kinda not telling the truth when you talk people are dealing with statistic majorities. Because which groups are you dealing with ? Blonde people ? They are a statistical minority. Would you want to give me a list of minorities you are thinking of when you talk about minority ? Because I seriously doubt it coincides with "statistical minorities"

>It seems the term minority has been used to equate/compare women to statistical minority groups. As someone

No, it seems like you don't understand what minority groups are. Like most of society. The term comes from academia, and people just perverse the meaning.

It's a lie to claim people think of "statistical minorities" because then they would think of blonde people, brown eyed people, people with super high IQ, aristocrats, etc etc. There are many many people that you are almost surely not thinking about when talking about minorities. Maybe you mean ethnic minorities. Maybe.

>It is strange to use it when the exact opposite is true statistically.

It's stranger to use it in a way that's completely inconsistent. And ignores the history of the word. Even stranger to not know the multiple meanings of the word, and defend your ignorance like the problem is people who spent decades on this topic know less than you.

Thanks, this is a great list! Another one I've heard good things about is Finding Charity's Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland.

That wouldn't be a very helpful thing to search in order to find what you are seeking. Compact Theory is a philosophic theory that dates back much longer than the constitutional debate on secession. Compact Theory is merely the idea that government is a contract between the people within a given area to create "The State" and give that entity a monopoly on violence to enforce laws. Searching for that will take you way outside the more narrow debate on secession. I think what you are looking for is a broad overview of both sides of the secession debate within American history.

If you are looking for arguments of the day, try reading some historical works on the subject. I will refer you to:

• Brian D. Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union - http://www.amazon.com/The-Fragile-Fabric-Union-Politics/dp/0801893038
  
  
• Elizabeth Varon, Disunion! - http://www.amazon.com/Disunion-American-1789-1859-Littlefield-History/dp/0807832324
  
  Schoen would be particularly helpful because he goes in depth on the southern perspective on secession. He argues that southerners seceded from a position of strength, believing that their contribution to the world economic system (as the largest cotton producers) would bring them support for their secession. He goes on at length about some of the constitutional theories presented by them.
  
  These two surveys below would also be great references. They are both really long surveys of antebellum America, so most of it will be irrelevant. So skip through and only read the relevant parts that include political debate on the topic of secession. These will show you the key players involved in the debate:
  
  
• Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought - http://www.amazon.com/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195078942
  
  
• Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy - http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-American-Democracy-Jefferson/dp/0393058204
  
  All four of these books should be available in almost any library - especially a university library if you have one nearby.

https://www.amazon.com/Scorpions-Sting-Antislavery-Coming-Civil/dp/0393351211

https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-National-Destruction-Slavery-1861-1865/dp/0393347753

The author's a sexist ass but he's an excellent historian

Read Bound of Canann, which details how many early Christian Americans were abolitionists, even before the South started to develop. For example, there were early Puritans in New England who argued for equality among the races, and Quakers did the same, with their intentions focused on using Christianity to be a force for equality. Their early intentions had little to nothing to do with the South and were purely religious and social justice oriented.

Less than 20% of Southerners owned slaves, less than 5% more that 5 IIRC.

David Cecelski wrote an excellent book not long ago called The Waterman's Song about slaves working in maritime industries in North Carolina. They did jobs including fishing, working boats, digging canals, and a few were even captains of small boats working the sounds and canals.

The book is very popular right now, many libraries should have it.

Two really good books on the topic are, The Gray and the Black and Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807125571/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195315863/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

As a general rule I expect that they, lacking knowledge of the bigger picture, would side with the people closest to where they each appeared.

That being said, here is where I would think it would be most interesting to see them:

RWBY has an industrialist's daughter and an oppressed racial minority in their group. This would normally indicate a pro-abolitionist slant. However, there was a significant number of wealthy free blacks who owned slaves during that time. Further, Blake's ability to "pass" was an earlier plot point (and parallels a number of mixed-ancestry people at the time); so the most interesting place to put this group is in one of the Confederacy's larger cities (Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston, New Orleans, etc.) And see how that affects their dynamics.

JNPR is perfect for the Shenandoah and Tennessee Valley theatres. Two scions of respected, if not powerful, families; a cherished but tough daughter, and an orphan of the back woods. They are, by definition, more morally ambiguous; so they could fall on either side of the conflict.

CRDL makes the most sense in one of two forces: those of William T. Sherman (who is still hated by many Georgians for his March to the sea) or those of Nathan Bedford Forrest (who thought that political terrorism in the form of the original KKK was a good idea... Asshole.) In either case, they are bullies, bad news for whoever isn't actually fighting the war.

CVFY and SSSN both belong in the Western Theatre. The two sides of the conflict we're far less defined out there, and there were two other parties involved as well (Mexico and the Tribes with a Frenchmen or two thrown in). Think "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" or "A Fistful of Dollars" or "Magnificent Seven" for reference.

I've read books on it, here's a new comprehensive one you can buy right now!
https://www.amazon.com/This-Vast-Southern-Empire-Slaveholders/dp/0674737253

Moderators, we need to get the list nailed down and stickied or on sidebar.

Oh yeah, we need to add Matt Karp. This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy.

Here's a link to a proper version of the print

It might not be anything special

Part of the image is used as a cover for the book Slave Narratives of Texas.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Slave-Narratives-Texas-Tyler/dp/1933337036

You might be able to find a credit for the image that way.

Also you do know that Stanford is a "school" (country club) built on the exploitation of immigrants and the proletariat...ie Irish and chinese railroad workers...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1608194027/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1409021664&sr=8-2

And napalm was invented at Harvard... shit without tobacco, in the early 1600s the america colonies would have failed...I love duke university too!

Did you just call for experts but not actually advocate any experts?

Here, read This Vast Southern Empire by Matt Karp, which does a good job of showing how the arguments that it wasn't about slavery were made up after the fact, and pretty shitty arguments as well.

>How about the tens of millions (being generous) that died? How was their standard of living increased?

That's why I initially asked if we're talking a specific band of time. It is UNDENIABLE that post Holodomor the Soviets were way better off than they were under the Czars. It's ALSO undeniable that one of the largest drops in standards of living in the history of the world without a domestic war was the fall of the USSR. I'm not some crazy tankie, Holodomor was a real ass thing, but so was the American genocide of 40-50m native americans and slave trade, both of which were classically liberal lines of enlightenment thinking that were precursors to neoliberal ideology.



> By you own India link, it says less than half the number you cite.
>

You literally denied slavery in tons of countries, including the US, and when presented with evidence of it you have no counter argument other than to cite that different sources cite different numbers on slavery in the same country, in large part because estimates and censuses are hard to find often due to the nature of it. Take some ownership of shit.

>If you were skilled labor pre-NAFTA and lived along the US border it was heaven, but for the vast majority of others it has meant ultimately lower wages or meager gains

>Which is funny because if you look at literally any source, really most of the gains were made near the border.

That's literally what I said...NAFTA was sold in part saying it'd make lives better for Mexican citizens in unskilled manufacturing and agriculture. It has made it worse on both fronts, and the gains of it have gone almost entirely to people who were already well off. Walmart was literally trying to get away with not paying it's labor which I cited, and the vast concentrations of wealth in Mexico have lead to much much stronger cartels as vast changes in income inequality has made it very easy to capture locals to make them sex slaves in both Mexico and the US as well as to own local governments and even buy legitimate businesses ala the Maquiadoras.

>Income inequality is not a measure of poverty. Good God.

There's literally no definition of poverty that's stable. It's almost always a relativistic metric. As such, income inequality is an aspect of it whether you deny it or not.

This Vast Southern Empire is literally the best book written about the politics/economics behind slavery and everything surrounding the succession.

Them how do you explain the thousands of “black” slave owners in the American south? https://www.amazon.com/Black-Slaveowners-Masters-Carolina-1790-1860/dp/0786469315/ref=nodl_

Yes, all the way up until the war, there were thousands of slaveholders who themselves had been slaves. https://www.theroot.com/did-black-people-own-slaves-1790895436/amp

And there is a book just about “black” slave owners in SC: https://www.amazon.com/Black-Slaveowners-Masters-Carolina-1790-1860/dp/0786469315

Lol no. D’Souza is a far right revisionist historian who literally argues FDR was a fascist and JFK was a Nazi. He’s a token of the alt right and makes a living churning out bullshit conspiracy theories.

Don’t read his books just because he’s an Indian guy who talk about politics. Read someone who actually understands history and speaks the truth.

I’d recommend three books, one short, two long: On Freedom by Cass Sunstein, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson, and The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough.

No, slavery was the over-riding issue, and States Rights was a justification. How could you expect anything else when an entire economic structure is challenged? Ideas like States Rights come from the material world, not the other way around. To start a discussion with an idea, and proceed to its affects is to turn the entire dialectical exchange on its head.

Regarding the "many" blacks who served in the Confederate Army: Where are the enlistment records for black confederates? Where are the muster rolls? Where are the reliable eyewitness accounts? Why did the Confederate Congress debate recruiting blacks and authorized that recruitment, in the closing days of the war, if there were already black regiments?

Here's a book and a comic.

>That's why I initially asked if we're talking a specific band of time. It is UNDENIABLE that post Holodomor the Soviets were way better off than they were under the Czars. It's ALSO undeniable that one of the largest drops in standards of living in the history of the world without a domestic war was the fall of the USSR. I'm not some crazy tankie, Holodomor was a real ass thing, but so was the American genocide of 40-50m native americans and slave trade, both of which were classically liberal lines of enlightenment thinking that were precursors to neoliberal ideology.

Aside from this being a major whataboutism, source that precursor to neoliberalism claim.

>You literally denied slavery in tons of countries, including the US, and when presented with evidence of it you have no counter argument other than to cite that different sources cite different numbers on slavery in the same country, in large part because estimates and censuses are hard to find often due to the nature of it. Take some ownership of shit.

If you lie about one statistic, what else are you lying about? I'm not denying slavery doesn't exist. But it's an important normative value of all neoliberals to stop slavery. It's like trying to blame the northern states for slavery. they were the one against it.

>
>>If you were skilled labor pre-NAFTA and lived along the US border it was heaven, but for the vast majority of others it has meant ultimately lower wages or meager gains
>
>>Which is funny because if you look at literally any source, really most of the gains were made near the border.
>
>It has made it worse on both fronts

Citation needed.

> and the gains of it have gone almost entirely to people who were already well off.

Citation needed.

> income inequality has made it very easy to capture locals to make them sex slaves in both Mexico and the US as well as to own local governments and even buy legitimate businesses ala the Maquiadoras.

You're making so many claims you can't even keep up with the citations. Show me how income inequality causes all of that.

>There's literally no definition of poverty that's stable. It's almost always a relativistic metric. As such, income inequality is an aspect of it whether you deny it or not.

It doesn't matter how stable any of the other definitions are, income inequality is not a definition at all. Income inequality, in its own right, is not even a bad thing.

Before you keep going, might I remind you that literally all your citations so far in all your comments do not show what you claim. You need to focus not on the things happening, but the causal mechanism. So chop chop.