Beveridge award of the American Historical Association. A groundbreaking study of two cultures in early America. Black majority won the Albert J.

American Slavery, American Freedom

How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, "the marriage of slavery and freedom, " in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.

They were all slaveholders. Virginians drafted not only the declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. American slavery, american Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America.

Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable. New york times book review in the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. Thomas jefferson led them in declaring independence. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time.

George washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression.

American History: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions

And along the way, he touches upon the cultural milestones of American history, from Tom Paine's The Crisis to Allen Ginsberg's Howl. American history: a very short introduction is a panoramic history of the United States, one that covers virtually every topic of importance--and yet can be read in a single day.

In a miracle of concision, Paul S. Yet in underscoring such large themes, gender, and the crucial role of race, the importance of individual actors, Boyer also highlights the diversity of the American experience, ethnicity, and social class in shaping the contours of specific groups within the nation's larger tapestry.

Boyer sheds light on the colonial era, the wars in iraq and afghanistan, the roaring twenties and the Great Depression; the two world wars and the Cold War that followed; right up to the tragedy of 9/11, the Revolution and the birth of the new nation; slavery and the Civil War; Reconstruction and the Gilded Age; the Progressive era, and the epoch-making election of Barack Obama.

Power, the centrality of religion, the progression from an agrarian to an industrial to a post-industrial economic order. Here is a masterful picture of America's achievements and failures, large-scale socio-historical forces, and pivotal events. Ranging from the earliest native american settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, diplomacy, cultural, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, and scientific developments that shaped our country.

Certain broad trends shape much of the narrative--immigration, continental expansion, urbanization, slavery, the global projection of U. S.

North American Indians: A Very Short Introduction

Going beyond the stereotypes that so often distort our views of Native Americans, this Very Short Introduction offers a historically accurate, deeply engaging, and often inspiring account of the wide array of Native peoples in America. About the series: combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics.

But how did they come to be here? what were their agricultural, 000 years ago, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today? Eminent historians Theda Perdue and Michael Green begin by describing how nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers followed the bison and woolly mammoth over the Bering land mass between Asia and what is now Alaska between 25, 000 and 15, settling throughout North America.

Most importantly, govern themselves, the authors stress how Native Americans have struggled to maintain their sovereignty--first with European powers and then with the United States--in order to retain their lands, support their people, and pursue practices that have made their lives meaningful. They describe hunting practices among different tribes, the role of kinship and cooperation in Native societies, their varied burial rites and spiritual practices, agricultural ways of life, how some made the gradual transition to more settled, and many other features of Native American life.

Throughout the book, perdue and green stress the great diversity of indigenous peoples in America, who spoke more than 400 different languages before the arrival of Europeans and whose ways of life varied according to the environments they settled in and adapted to so successfully. When europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there.

Oxford university Press, USA.

Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

She begins her narrative on the shores of seventeenth-century Africa, tracing how the trade in human bodies came to define the life of the Gold Coast. Harvard University Press. This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors.

The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade. In extraordinary detail, gasping for air, we witness these men and women cramped in the holds of ships, and trying to make sense of an unfamiliar sea and an unimaginable destination.

Smallwood takes us into the ports and stone fortresses where African captives were held and prepared, and then through the Middle Passage itself. Arriving in america, we see how these new migrants enter the market for laboring bodies, and struggle to reconstruct their social identities in the New World.

Throughout, sailors, smallwood examines how the people at the center of her story-merchant capitalists, and slaves-made sense of the bloody process in which they were joined. Ultimately, saltwater Slavery details how African people were transformed into Atlantic commodities in the process. Stephanie E. Oxford university Press, USA.

Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market.

The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

Examines black pre-civil war culture and the slave family, and discipline Oxford university Press, childrearing, courtship practices and wedding ceremonies, familial roles, language, detailing sexual attitudes, USA. Harvard University Press.

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

Displaying keen insight into the minds of both slaves and slaveholders, Roll, Jordan, Roll is a testament to the power of the human spirit under conditions of extreme oppression. Harvard University Press. This landmark history of slavery in the South—a winner of the Bancroft Prize—challenged conventional views of slaves by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.

Rather than emphasizing the cruelty and degradation of slavery, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that slaves forced their owners to acknowledge their humanity through culture, music, and religion. Not merely passive victims, the slaves in this account actively engaged with the paternalism of slaveholding culture in ways that supported their self-respect and aspirations for freedom.

Oxford university Press, USA. Roll, from slave weddings and funerals, and labor of slaves, clothing, Jordan, to the language, Roll covers a vast range of subjects, food, and places particular emphasis on religion as both a major battleground for psychological control and a paradoxical source of spiritual strength.

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The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop Library of American Biography

Harvard University Press. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times. In every aspect of our society today we see the workings of the tension between individual freedom and the demands of authority. Here is the story of the people that brought this idea to our shores: the Puritans.

Edmund morgan relates the hardships and triumphs of the Puritan movement through this vivid account of its most influential leader, John Winthrop. Oxford university Press, USA. The titles in the library of american Biography Series make ideal supplements for American History Survey courses or other courses in American history where figures in history are explored.

Paperback, and inexpensive, brief, each interpretive biography in this series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. Caught between the ideals of god’s Law and the practical needs of the people, John Winthrop walked a line few could tread.

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American Colonies: The Settling of North America, Vol. 1

Harvard University Press. In a vivid narrative, taylor draws upon cutting-edge scholarship to create a timely picture of the colonial world characterized by an interplay of freedom and slavery, opportunity and loss. Formidable. A multicultural, through the decades of western colonization and conquest, from the native inhabitants from milennia past, and across the entire continent, multinational history of colonial America from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Internal Enemy and American RevolutionsIn the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, all the way to the Pacific coast.

Transcending the usual anglocentric version of our colonial past, Spain, he recovers the importance of Native American tribes, African slaves, the Netherlands, and the rival empires of France, and even Russia in the colonization of North America. Moving beyond the atlantic seaboard to examine the entire continent, American Colonies reveals a pivotal period in the global interaction of peoples, plants, animals, cultures, and microbes.

. Provokes us to contemplate the ways in which residents of North America have dealt with diversity. The new york times book Review Oxford university Press, USA.

Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America

Oxford university Press, USA. Strange new land focuses on how africans survived this brutal process--and ultimately shaped the contours of american racial slavery through numerous means, which provided a key element in their triumphant story of survival - Listening to talk of liberty and freedom, including: - Mastering English and making it their own - Converting to Christianity and transforming the religion - Holding fast to Islam or combining their spiritual beliefs with the faith of their masters - Recalling skills and beliefs, dances and stories from the Old World, of the rights of man and embracing it as a fundamental right--even petitioning colonial administrators and insisting on that right.

Against the troubling backdrop of american slavery, Strange New Land surveys black social and cultural life, superbly illustrating how such a diverse group of people from the shores of West and Central Africa became a community in North America. Engaging and accessibly written, Strange New Land explores the history of slavery and the struggle for freedom before the United States became a nation.

Harvard University Press. Beginning with the colonization of North America, Peter Wood documents the transformation of slavery from a brutal form of indentured servitude to a full-blown system of racial domination.

Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with Documents Bedford Series in History and Culture

Oxford university Press, USA. Harvard University Press. The introduction outlines ways African Americans influenced the course of the Revolution and continued to be affected by its aftermath. Document headnotes and annotations, a chronology, a selected bibliography, questions for consideration, and index offer additional pedagogical support.

Amplifying these themes are nearly forty documents — including personal narratives, pension applications, advertisements, petitions, letters, poems, and images — that testify to the diverse goals and actions of African Americans during the Revolutionary era. Holton’s introduction examines the conditions of black American life on the eve of colonial independence and the ways in which Revolutionary rhetoric about liberty provided African Americans with the language and inspiration for advancing their cause.

In this fresh look at liberty and freedom in the revolutionary era from the perspective of black Americans, Woody Holton recounts the experiences of slaves who seized freedom by joining the British as well as those — slave and free — who served in Patriot military forces. Despite the rhetoric, however, most black Americans remained enslaved after the Revolution.

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