"The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation"

[Linda Anderson]

The National Book Critics Circle Awards "...which are given in six categories, were presented Thursday in a ceremony at the New School. Finalists and winners are selected by the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.

"David Brion Davis won the nonfiction award for “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation,” the third volume of his trilogy and the culmination of nearly 50 years of research."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/books/...-well&_r=0

Here is the NYT's review.

"In 1862, when Nathaniel Hawthorne headed south from New England to see the Civil War firsthand, he came upon a group of former slaves trudging northward. 'They seemed a kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human,' he wrote, 'but perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities of olden times.' 'Whoever may be benefited by the results of this war,' he added, 'it will not be the present generation of negroes.'

"Hawthorne’s stunning comparison of real men and women to half-human creatures, even if kindly intended, gets to the heart of David Brion Davis’s “The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation,” the richly textured final volume in his exceptional trilogy about slavery in the Western Hemisphere. 'I have long interpreted the problem of slavery,' he writes in his introduction, 'as centering on the impossibility of converting humans into the totally compliant, submissive, accepting chattel symbolized by Aristotle’s ideal of the ‘natural slave.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/...davis.html