One Nation Divided by Slavery

History is often concerned with unfinished business—the problems and issues that one generation, or several, bequeath to posterity. The divisive subject of slavery was one such cross-generational difficulty that roiled the early republic. Historians of American abolitionism and antislavery, for example, have often noted the disjuncture between the ideals of the American Revolution and the realities of American society—a dialectical discourse that moved forward in time. The two faces of the American Janus—one looking toward liberty and the other looking away from it—reflected an imperfect, unfinished society that belied republican rhetoric and aspirations, however sincere. Michael F. Conlin's One Nation Divided by Slavery is a welcome reminder of how the legacy of the American Revolution—its memory—profoundly shaped the antebellum slavery controversy. How the founders of the American Republic alternatively accepted, justified, and contested slavery lived on in arguments advanced by slaveholders and antislavery advocates. Conlin, a professor of history at Eastern Washington University, demonstrates how the “history wars” of the antebellum era shaped the discourse on slavery as each sought the sanction of the past and the revered memory, however selectively constructed, of the founders

Abolitionism · Dialectic · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Subject (documents · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

• Slavery and Sacred Texts

  Jordan T Watkins•Slavery and Sacred Texts•2021

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