Whitman (history, Mount St. Mary's Coll., Maryland) examines the complexities of slavery and master-slave relations in early Federal Baltimore. The ownership of slaves was a sizable investment, and Whitman illustrates that masters minimized the risk of their running away by gradual manumission, freeing the slave after a certain period of service. He also shows that slave flight was often a means of extracting from the master more favorable terms of service within the condition of slavery. Whitman thus reveals that slavery was a more intricate process than most readers assume, involving hired slaves, industrial slaves, gradual freedom, and the status and condition of the freed slave. A scholarly examination of the subject appropriate for students doing research who can handle the statistics and demographics.Robert A. Curtis, Taylor Memorial P.L., Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
An interesting, intelligent, and important study of slavery and manumission.
Journal of Economic History
Baltimore has long been recognized as an anomaly, a southern city where, by the Civil War, slavery remained legal but the vast majority of people of color were free. The Price of Freedom offers a coherent, thorough, and well-researched explanation of how and why white Baltimoreans, who were not known for their abolitionist sympathies, allowed this situation to develop
William and Mary Quarterly
How nice to read Stephen Whitman's study of class and race—bereft of jargon and political cant—which captures the true subtlety of the relationships between blacks and whites during a time of rapid social, economic, and political change.
Whitman provides an extraordinarily sophisticated look at the manumission process, producing a history that performs the difficult task of reflecting and separating the roles of paternalism, antislavery idealism, economic interest, and most important of all, the skill and intelligent choices made by slaves themselves in bringing about large numbers of manumissions in Baltimore.... Touches issues that have long been of concern to Afro-Americanists, and consequently this book has a significance that extends way beyond Whitman's discussion of Maryland or even the antebellum South more broadly.
Journal of American History
An original, path-breaking study.
A must read for students who want to understand the ramifications of manumission.
A careful examination of the ways in which local, national, and international circumstances allowed the line between slavery and freedom to become quite blurred in Baltimore.
Co-winner of the 1997 Maryland Historical Society Book Award.
A vivid picture of the economic and social realities facing blacks in Baltimore during a time of 'self-led liberation'.
A fine study.... a penetrating and subtle analysis that substantially expands our understanding of the subject.
American Historical Review
Illuminates the complex amalgam of social forces and human motives that figured in a group of slaveowners' individual decisions to terminate their slave labor voluntarily.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
No one interested in slavery or the nation's economic development should miss this important book. Offers a nuanced view of how slavery could exist in a developing economy and of the link between slavery and freedom in an urban setting.
North Carolina Historical Review
