Publishers Weekly
12/12/2022
Pepperdine University historian Larson (Franklin & Washington) explores in this solid account the interplay of liberty and slavery in the decades leading up to and following the American Revolution. Among other individuals and events, Larson spotlights enslaved Boston poet Phillis Wheatley, the 1772 Somerset v. Steuart ruling that American laws protecting slaveholders’ property rights did not apply in England, and Ona Judge, who ran away from President George Washington’s household in 1796. Elsewhere, Larson analyzes meanings of liberty in the writings of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and others; examines how the independence movement, born of opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, employed slavery as its “activating metaphor”; recounts how the sectional divide deepened at the Constitutional Convention; and details how abolitionists sought to use Benjamin Banneker’s 1792 almanac to refute Thomas Jefferson’s belief that Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Larson’s memorable turns of phrase (“As arbitrary as it was, the three-fifths compromise acted like a riptide sucking in delegates no matter how they tried to swim against it”) and keen insights into important yet lesser-known figures keep the narrative moving, even as he sticks to mostly familiar terrain. The result is an accessible and informative overview of the paradox at the heart of the American experiment. (Jan.)
The American Scholar - Fergus M. Bordewich
"Compelling.…Larson is a judicious and often eloquent guide."
Susan Dunn
"Timely and compelling. American Inheritance relates the vital story of liberty and slavery in Revolutionary America with balance and nuance."
New York Times - Jon Meacham
"Edward J. Larson’s American Inheritance is a welcome addition to a public conversation, in the wake of The New York Times’s 1619 Project, that has largely produced more heat than light…. Larson’s sober new book…repays reading, for it has a good deal to teach those who want to see the American story in overly simplistic terms."
Fergus M. Bordewichn Scholar
"[A] compelling account of the tangled relationship between liberty and slavery.…[Edward J.] Larson is a judicious and often eloquent guide through the thicket, making a persuasive case that both liberty and slavery, real and imagined, cannot be untangled from the thinking of the founders, the institutions they created, and the ways in which Americans understood their society."
H. W. Brands
"Larson makes clear how inseparable were the concepts of freedom and bondage in these early years, and thereby makes understandable why the contradictions they created have vexed us so long."
Alan Taylor
"Larson deftly explores the dramatic lives and revealing words of free and enslaved Americans who sought either to preserve or erase the pervasive tension between liberty and bondage in the Revolutionary era."
John Fabian Witt
"Larson has brought a true historian’s sensibility to the fierce new debate over slavery at the founding. American Inheritance unearths a legacy of unexpected ironies, terrible tragedies, and fateful opportunities—a legacy with which Americans still struggle today."
Harvard magazine
"An enlightening account of how, despite their irreconcilable meanings, liberty and slavery were conjoined in the birth of the nation from 1765 to 1795."
Douglas Brinkley
"A seminal and soulful account of the antagonistic role slavery played in the founding of the United States. Every chapter is anchored in deep research, fine-tuned analysis, and good old-fashioned storytelling."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Glenn C. Altschuler
"[A]n elegantly written, engaging, and immensely informative account of attempts by colonists to reconcile the implications of liberty with the reality of slavery for Blacks."
Akhil Reed Amar
"A master storyteller and meticulous analyst, Larson offers a wise and balanced account of the founding era’s thorniest themes: liberty, equality, slavery, and race. Larson’s trademark blend of deep erudition and easygoing prose animates every page of this instant classic."
Wall Street Journal - Harold Holzer
"Mr. Larson is a calm but vigorous storyteller who melds sophisticated historical analysis with telling anecdotes to vivify a graceful narrative…. While acknowledging that the study of liberty and slavery in the Revolutionary era remains a 'partisan minefield,' Mr. Larson plunges in, sparing none of the era’s most prominent revolutionaries from scrutiny. Mr. Larson is scrupulously careful to acknowledge their considerable accomplishments—but does not shrink from exposing the gaping blind spot that even some of their contemporaries recognized."
author of Our First Civil War H. W. Brands
Larson makes clear how inseparable were the concepts of freedom and bondage in these early years, and thereby makes understandable why the contradictions they created have vexed us so long."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An elegantly written, engaging, and immensely informative account of attempts by colonists to reconcile the implications of liberty with the reality of slavery for Blacks.”
Library Journal
08/01/2022
The Pulitzer Prize—winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion , Larson probes the awful contradiction at the heart of the American Revolution: it was fought to liberate the Colonies from England by settlers who themselves enslaved others.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-10-20
The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian returns with a study of the era that “changed the American understanding of liberty and slavery.”
Larson, author of Franklin & Washington, A Magnificent Catastrophe, and other acclaimed books of American history, recasts the narrative of the nation’s founding by focusing on vociferous debates about liberty that erupted during three crucial decades of revolutionary fervor. By 1700, more than 2 million enslaved Africans had been shipped to America. At a time when rebellious colonists proclaimed their refusal to be enslaved by the British, most saw no contradiction in buying and selling men, women, and children. Many, especially in the South, agreed with Thomas Jefferson that Blacks were inferior, “incapable of liberty on a par with whites.” Some, mostly in the Northern states, held that slavery was morally “odious,” incompatible with a nation promoting freedom for all. War gave enslaved people some hope of liberation: More Blacks served on the British side than the American, hoping to gain freedom from the nation that had abolished slavery. The American military refused to integrate until troops became so decimated that Blacks were accepted into “non-arms-bearing duties.” In 1777, when conscription was initiated, Whites in New England freed slaves to send as substitutes. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, the issue of slavery created a deep sectional divide, with the South refusing to ratify any document that did not preserve the Atlantic slave trade and assure the return of fugitive slaves. Although the term slave does not appear in the Constitution, provisions over the right to property mollified slave owners. Larson’s stirring narrative includes the perspectives of free and escaped slaves, such as James Somerset, who was brought to England by his owner, where he successfully sued for his freedom; poet Phillis Wheatley; and Ona Judge, dower property of Martha Washington, whose escape incited George Washington’s desperate, enraged search for her return.
An authoritative contribution to the dismal history of race in America.
