Race and Revolution

by Gary B. Nash

Overview

The most profound crisis of conscience for white Americans at the end of the eighteenth century became their most tragic failure. Race and Revolution is a trenchant study of the revolutionary generation's early efforts to right the apparent contradiction of slavery and of their ultimate compromises that not only left the institution intact but provided it with the protection of a vastly strengthened government after 1788.
Reversing the conventional view that blames slavery on the South's social and economic structures, Nash stresses the role of the northern states in the failure to abolish slavery. It was northern racism and hypocrisy as much as southern intransigence that buttressed "the peculiar institution." Nash also shows how economic and cultural factors intertwined to result not in an apparently judicious decision of the new American nation but rather its most significant lost opportunity.
Race and Revolution describes the free black community's response to this failure of the revolution's promise, its vigorous and articulate pleas for justice, and the community's successes in building its own African-American institutions within the hostile environment of early nineteenth-century America.
Included with the text of Race and Revolution are nineteen rare and crucial documents—letters, pamphlets, sermons, and speeches—which provide evidence for Nash's controversial and persuasive claims. From the words of Anthony Benezet and Luther Martin to those of Absalom Jones and Caesar Sarter, readers may judge the historical record for themselves.
"In reality," argues Nash, "the American Revolution represents the largest slave uprising in our history." Race and Revolution is the compelling story of that failed quest for the promise of freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461641643
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/01/1990
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Gary B. Nash is the author of a variety of books on race and class in early America, including: Freedom By Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath with Jean Soderlund (Oxford, 1991); Forging Freedom: The Black Urban Experience in Philadelphia, 1720-1820 (Harvard, 1988); Race, Class and Politics: Essays on Colonial and Revolutionary Society (Univ. of Illinois, 1985); The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1979); Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (Prentice-Hall, 1974, 1982); Class and Society in Early America (Prentice-Hall, 1970); and Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726 (Princeton, 1968). He is a general editor of The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society (Harper and Row, 1986, 1990). In addition to teaching history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Nash is the associate director of the National Center for History in the Schools. He holds his B.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Revolutionary Generation Embraces Abolitionism
Chapter 2 The Failure of Abolitionism
Chapter 3 Black Americans in a White Republic
Chapter 4 Documents for Chapter One
Chapter 5 Documents for Chapter Two
Chapter 6 Documents for Chapter Three

What People are Saying About This

R. J.M. Blackett

Race and Revolution should become standard reading in graduate and undergraduate seminars. It is broadly conceived, and engages the major historiographical issues in such a way as to suggest new avenues of investigation.
—(R.J.M. Blackett, author of Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist movement)

Linda K. Kerber

A powerful, forthright, and revisionist interpretation . . . thoroughly convincing.

Larry E. Tise

Race and Revolution is a bold and stirring documentation of the collapse of the devotion for liberty in America in the immediate wake of the American Revolution. While his interpretation will startle some, Gary Nash correctly finds that the demise of efforts to abolish slavery and incorporate blacks in American society proceeded directly from an increasingly conservative, white supremacist North, not a self—serving South. Finally, Historians may be taking off the blinders that have perpetually obscured our ability to understand slavery and race as national, not regional problems.
—(Larry E. Tise, author of Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America)

Leon F. Litwack

The best history makes a difference in how we think about and feel the past. Race and Revolution is an important, tough—minded, provocative group of essays that contributes to our understanding of the most debilitating virus in the American system. Not only has Gary Nash illuminated the critical challenge of race and slavery in the revolutionary era and "the most tragic failure" of American leaders, but he has brought to the forefront the long—ignored role of black revolutionists in the early struggles for freedom.
—(Leon F. Litwack, author of Been in the Storm So Long)

Editorial Reviews

Social historian Nash ( Forging Freedom , LJ 5/1/88) presents three essays and supporting annotated documents dealing with the neglected topic of slavery during the Revolutionary era. He argues convincingly that most Revolutionary leaders understood the incompatibility of slavery with their equalitarian ideology. Unlike past historians, Nash especially blames Northern leaders, who were unwilling to compensate Southern slaveholders or to accept a biracial America, for the persistence of slavery at a time when it most easily could have been abolished. He contends that free blacks adapted to Northern discrimination by creating alternative organizations, especially black churches, which safeguarded an African-American identity and maintained abolitionist fervor. Relying upon recent scholarship, the author provides an insightful, well-written investigation which will appeal to scholars and the general public.-- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Library Journal

Clearly written. .. [Nash]'s coverage of the free black community's vigorous efforts to achieve justice in white supremacist society in the northern states is particularly illuminating.

Choice Reviews

Race and Revolution should become standard reading in graduate and undergraduate seminars. It is broadly conceived and engages the major historiographical issues in such a way as to suggest new avenues of investigation.

R.J.M. Blackett

Race and Revolution is a bold and stirring documentation of the collapse of the devotion for liberty in America in the immediate wake of the American Revolution. While his interpretations will startle some, Gary Nash correctly finds that the demise of efforts to abolish slavery and incorporate blacks in American society proceeded directly from an increasingly conservative, white supremacist North, not a self-serving South. Finally, historians may be taking off the blinders that have perpetually obscured our ability to understand slavery and race as national, not regional problems.

Larry E. Tise

The best history makes a difference in how we think about and feel the past. Race and Revolution is an important, tough-minded, provocative group of essays that contributes to our understanding of the most debilitating virus in the American system. Not only has Gary Nash illuminated the critical challenge of race and slavery in the revolutionary era and 'the most tragic failure' of American leaders, but he has brought to the forefront the long ignored role of black revolutionists in the early struggles for freedom.

Leon F. Litwack

A powerful, forthright, and revisionist interpretation. .. thoroughly convincing.

Linda K. Kerber

A powerful book. .. a tightly argued and vigorous reassessment of the revolutionary generation's failure to eliminate slavery.

Journal of the Early Republic

Clearly written. .. [Nash]'s coverage of the free black community's vigorous efforts to achieve justice in white supremacist society in the northern states is particularly illuminating.

Choice

Clearly written. .. [Nash]'s coverage of the free black community's vigorous efforts to achieve justice in white supremacist society in the northern states is particularly illuminating.

CHOICE