American Inheritance

American Inheritance by Edward J Larson

New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders of the founding who called for American liberty are scrutinised for enslaving Black people themselves: George Washington consistently refused to recognise the freedom of those who escaped his Mount Vernon plantation. And we have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed. We now have that history in Edward J. Larson’s insightful synthesis of the founding. With slavery thriving in Britain’s Caribbean empire and practiced in all of the American colonies, the independence movement’s calls for liberty proved narrow, though some Black observers and others made their full implications clear. In the war, both sides employed strategies to draw needed support from free and enslaved Blacks, whose responses varied by local conditions. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, a widening sectional divide shaped the fateful compromises over slavery that would prove disastrous in the coming decades. Larson’s narrative delivers poignant moments that deepen our understanding: we witness New York’s tumultuous welcome of Washington as liberator through the eyes of Daniel Payne, a Black man who had escaped enslavement at Mount Vernon two years before. Indeed, throughout Larson’s brilliant history it is the voices of Black Americans that prove the most convincing of all on the urgency of liberty.

"Timely and compellingAmerican Inheritance relates the vital story of liberty and slavery in Revolutionary America with balance and nuance." -- Susan Dunn, author of Jefferson’s Second Revolution
"Larson deftly explores the dramatic lives and revealing words of free and enslaved Americans who sought either to preserve or erase the pervasive tension between liberty and bondage in the Revolutionary era." -- Alan Taylor, author of American Republics
"Larson has brought a true historian’s sensibility to the fierce new debate over slavery at the founding. American Inheritance unearths a legacy of unexpected ironies, terrible tragedies, and fateful opportunities—a legacy with which Americans still struggle today" -- John Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln’s Code
"Larson makes clear how inseparable were the concepts of freedom and bondage in these early years, and thereby makes understandable why the contradictions they created have vexed us so long." -- H. W. Brands, author of Our First Civil War

Edward J. Larson's many acclaimed works in American history include the Pulitzer Prize–winning history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods. He is University Professor of History and holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780393882209
ISBN 10	0393882209
Titel	American Inheritance
Autor	Edward J Larson
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	WW Norton & Co
Erscheinungsjahr	2023-02-17
Seitenanzahl	368
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar