"The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation"

[Wild Bill]

I missed the question Laurie asked about Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone. It is well worth reading. Berlin likes to emphasize what historians call "Self Emancipation.' He shows that slavey had many variations depending upon the value of staple crops grown in North America and blacks' abilities to take advantage of these shifts in slavery to establish a free black population. Of great influence was the American Revolution and lack of staple production in the North and the influence of French and Spanish culture in the South, much of which echoes the Tannenbaum thesis of a kinder approach to bondage.

But he handles essentially the first 200 years of slavery and stops in the early 1800s when the slave system became tougher and more disciplined influenced by the Haitian Revolution (which helped The US to buy the Louisiana Purchase), General Gabriel's attempted revolution in Virginia, and the revolutions in Pointe Coupee and along the German coast of the Mississippi River (which many blamed on the French exodus to Louisiana along with some of their slaves from the black take-over of Haiti). Berlin sees Denmark Vesey's and Nat Turner's rebellions as a new type of black revolution that turns away from the 17th century Enlightenment, the rights of man, Age of Revolution in the US and France and now emphasizes a mixture of African and Christian millennialism. But the Civil War would return black rebellion to its 17th century roots, and the rights of man.