This review of a recent collection of essays may be of interest to
Va-Hist subscribers. 

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Subject: H-Net Review Publication: 'A Crisis of Race'

Subject: H-Net Review Publication:  'A Crisis of Race'

G. S. Boritt, Scott Hancock, eds.  Slavery, Resistance, Freedom.
Oxford  Oxford University Press, 2009.  xix + 165 pp.  $15.95 (paper),
ISBN 978-0-19-538460-4.

Reviewed by Kirt Von Daacke (Lynchburg College) Published on H-South
(April, 2010) Commissioned by Catherine A. Cardno

A Crisis of Race

_Slavery, Resistance, Freedom_, a fine collection of essays edited by
Gabor S. Borritt and Scott Hancock of Gettysburg College, grew out of
that college's twentieth-anniversary Civil War Institute. The institute,
perennially a wellspring of new scholarship on the war, in
2006 gathered a star group of historians and devoted an entire week to
the theme of African American history. This slim volume represents the
result of that meeting, and as well offers readers fresh perspectives on
"the difference that slavery and freedom made to African Americans, and
how African Americans resisted slavery and responded when it crumbled"
(p. xiii). The essays collected within, examining the role of slavery in
the public imagination; runaway slaves; free blacks in the North; the
African American experience on the North-South border; the Union Army's
only all-black division; and black political leadership during
Reconstruction, will without a doubt prove very useful to anyone
teaching undergraduate courses on African American history, the U.S.
survey, and especially courses focused on the Civil War era.

The book opens with a critical meditation by Ira Berlin on the role and
importance of slavery in both U.S. history and in ongoing public debates
about history. Berlin sets the tone for this volume in arguing that
"American history cannot be understood without understanding slavery"
(p. 6). Therein lies one of the great strengths of this
collection--forcefully reinserting slavery into the discussion of the
Civil War era--a breath of fresh air in the classroom, where students'
knowledge of the era often extends little beyond having seen the movie
_Gods and Generals_ (2003) and having attended battle reenactments.
These essays will surely help students understand the importance of
abandoning a hagiographic focus on Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant,
Stonewall Jackson, William Tecumseh Sherman, and even Abraham Lincoln.

Further, this volume represents a useful corrective in reminding readers
that "behind the interest in slavery is a crisis of race" (p.
8). Ira Berlin's thoughtful analysis implies a need for updating W.
E. B. DuBois's conviction that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is
the problem of the color line."[1] Indeed, the 2008 presidential
election has demonstrated that race remains an American dilemma even in
the twenty-first century, and reminded Americans of the power of history
and memory in structuring even our modern conceptions of race and
identity. As Berlin argues, "slavery lives--and will continue to
live--in both history and memory ... perhaps by incorporating slavery's
memory into slavery's history--and vice versa--Americans, white and
black, can have a past that is both memorable and--at last--past" (p.
20).

_Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom_'s value to contemporary educators,
however, goes far beyond simply alerting readers to the importance of
slavery in understanding even present-day America. The collected essays
also represent a fantastic introduction to some of the best recent
scholarship on the experience of black Americans in slavery and in
freedom, and do so in a highly accessible and readable fashion. The
second essay in the volume, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger,
represents a powerful distillation of the findings of their Lincoln
Prize-winning monograph _Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation_.[2]
This essay and the one by Scott Hancock on black construction of memory
in the prewar North, by examining the antebellum foundations of the
postwar black experience and expectations, when slaves and free blacks
"challenged the system ...
struggled to attain their freedom," and subsequently sought to maintain
and define that very freedom, lays the groundwork for the essays that
follow, which focus solely on the black experience in the Civil War and
Reconstruction eras (p. 23). Hancock, by focusing on storytelling, oral
traditions, memory, protest, and ideas about identity and citizenship,
offers the undergraduate reader an excellent introduction to newer modes
of historical interpretation and forces students to see African
Americans as extremely active participants in the history of the early
republic.

Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin attempt to
de-emphasize the forced dichotomy of North and South in an essay that
compares the black experience in two locales, one in Pennsylvania and
the other in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, at the onset of the
Civil War. This essay represents yet another entry in an increasingly
crowded field of literature growing out of the Valley of the Shadow Web
site.[3] In particular, students will find this essay illuminating, as
it does such an admirable job of asking large questions in examining
small places. As a result, it will prove especially useful for those
seeking to encourage students to engage in their own research projects,
whether through the Valley of the Shadow portal or by investigating
another locale on their own.

Noah Andre Trudeau's "A Stranger in the Club: The Army of the Potomac's
Black Division" charts "the brief history of the only black division
organized in the Civil War to be made part of what is arguably the
best-known Union force of the period: the Army of the Potomac" (p. 96).
Although in many ways making the most traditional contribution to the
volume by presenting a narrative-driven account of the formation and
battle experiences of that black division, Trudeau's essay nonetheless
continues to highlight black action and black thought during the Civil
War while demonstrating rather forcefully that the black identity
formation charted earlier by Hancock was in fact national in scope--"the
experience of fighting within the Army of the Potomac was central to
what the black community hoped would be a transformation of American
society" (p.
117).

The final essay, contributed by eminent historian Eric Foner, examines
black political participation and office-holding during Reconstruction.
Foner's essay highlights the promise inherent in the immediate postwar
period, the incredible obstacles to black equality that remained firmly
ingrained in American society and culture, and ultimately, the energy,
agency, and skill with which African Americans attempted to become part
of America's political nation. For scholars of the era, this essay sheds
little new light, but for anyone teaching the era, it will help in the
struggle against what appears to be one of the most enduring of myths
about the time period--one in which black officeholders were portrayed
(and still are by many undergraduates) as "ignorant and propertyless,
lacking both the education and the economic stake in society supposedly
necessary for intelligent governance" (p. 119).

Taken as a whole, the essays contained within the pages of _Slavery,
Resistance, Freedom_ represent an incredibly valuable resource for
anyone teaching a Civil War-era course and seeking to keep the focus
consistently on the broader meanings of the war. The volume also would
fit well with anyone seeking a single comprehensive examination of the
contours of the black experience in that era as a supplementary text in
a more traditionally-structured Civil War course centering on military
and political history. Ultimately, _Slavery, Freedom, Resistance_
forcefully reminds the reader that the Civil War represented a crisis of
race, one that America had been wrestling with for decades before the
onset of war and one that it continues to work out symbolically on the
contested terrain of historical memory more than 140 years after the war
ended.

Notes

[1]. W. E. B. DuBois, _The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches_
(Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1907), vii.

[2]. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, _Runaway Slaves:
Rebels on the Plantation_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

[3]. In addition to this essay, the Valley of the Shadow Web site
(winner of the eLincoln Prize in 2000, at
http://valley.lib.virginia.edu) has represented the chief archival
source for Edward L. Ayers and Andrew J. Torget, _Two Communities in the
Civil War (A Norton Casebook in History)_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
2007); Edward L. Ayers, _In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The
Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863_ (New York: W.   W.
Norton & Co., 2004), which won the Bancroft Prize; and Edward L.
Ayers and Anne Sarah Rubin, _The Valley of The Shadow: Two Communities
in the American Civil War--The Eve of War_ (New York: W.
W. Norton & Co, 2000), which includes a searchable CD-ROM with primary
documents.

Citation: Kirt Von Daacke. Review of Boritt, G. S.; Hancock, Scott,
eds., _Slavery, Resistance, Freedom_. H-South, H-Net Reviews. April,
2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25490

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.




_______________________________________
David Herr, Editor H-South
St. Andrews Presbyterian College
Laurinburg, NC

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