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[Introduction To] The Thin Light Of Freedom: The Civil War And Emancipation In The Heart Of America, Edward L. Ayers

Bookshelf

A landmark Civil War history told from a fresh, deeply researched ground-level perspective.

At the crux of America’s history stand two astounding events: the immediate and complete destruction of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world, followed by a political reconstruction in which new constitutions established the fundamental rights of citizens for formerly enslaved people. Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable.

In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War. …

Saving Savannah: The City And The Civil War (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War by Jacqueline Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Generations Later: Has Once-Remote Promise Of Freedom Been Fulfilled?, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Emancipation began with a flickering promise, burned intensely for a few years during Reconstruction, and then smoldered for a century. Equality and justice have come into view for most African-Americans only in the past two generations. For many descendants of slavery, those essential rights of a free people are still hard to see.

The Effect Of Slavery On Southern Farmland Values In The Antebellum And Postbellum Era, Brandon Devlin

Honors Theses

In the past 30 years, the legacy of African-American slavery has experienced a transformation in historical perspective. Morality aside, several historians have suggested that the accepted views regarding slavery need revision, particularly in an economic sense. Utilizing cliometrics, census records, diaries, and first-hand accounts of slavery in the South, economic historians such as Robert Fogel and Stanley Engennan have made a compelling case for the viability and profitability of slavery by exposing the nuances of the system that historical generalities often ignore. Of course, words like "viable" and ''profitable" do not necessarily mean "virtuous"or even "preferable", but it does imply …

Slavery, Economics And Constitutional Ideals, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

As we think about endings, however, it is also useful to think about beginnings. That is what President Abraham Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address, delivered just five weeks before the surrender at Appomattox and his own assassination soon thereafter. All knew, he said reflecting sadly and thoughtfully on how the Civil War came about, that slavery was, "somehow," the cause. In fact, "somehow," however, lay puzzles, contradictions, and questions. The connections between slavery and the Civil War have concerned Americans ever since the events at Appomattox.

Rethinking Slavery And Freedom (Book Reviews), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review essay of the following books:

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin.

Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War edited by Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland.

The Strange Career Of Thomas Jefferson: Race And Slavery In American Memory, Edward L. Ayers, Scot A. French

History Faculty Publications

Jefferson's life has come to symbolize America's struggle with racial inequality, his successes and failures mirroring those of his nation. The quest for a more honest and inclusive rendering of the American past has placed a heavy burden on Jefferson and his slaves. Generation after generation of Americans has sought some kind of moral symmetry at Monticello, some kind of reconciliation between slavery and freedom, black and white, past injustice and present compensation.

The World The Liberal Capitalists Made (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South by James Oakes. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Slavery and Freedom pursues its thesis with dogged energy. "Southerners took their definition of freedom from the liberal capitalist world which produced them and of which they remained a part," Oakes argues, "and this could only mean that southern slavery was defined as the denial of the assumptions of liberal capitalism."

The Relationship Of The Protestant Episcopal Church In Virginia With The Negro Slaves 1830 To 1860: Success Or Failure?, Elisabeth Evans Wray

Master's Theses

Some conclusions may be drawn as to the success—or failure--of the Church's relationship with the slaves in nineteenth-century Virginia by constructing a narrative of the general attitudes held by the Episcopal Church (the bishops and other clergy and the laity) and the actions resulting from them. The years from 1830 to 1860 are the most fruitful period of the century in revealing through sermons, letters, newspapers, and books the Church's ideas concerning the institution of religious instruction for the slaves and their place in the life of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia. Because many of the attitudes …