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Date: | Wed, 1 Nov 2006 10:33:50 -0500 |
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Jurretta Heckscher quite correctly suggests reading Prof. Wolf's
forthcoming /Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in
Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner's Rebellion/. I'm looking
forward to doing so.
Suffice it to say for now that Prof. Levy did not use some of the most
basic scholarship on emancipation in early Virginia. Thus, he overlooked
the fine work of Peter J. Albert, Ira Berlin, Luther Porter Jackson,
Suzanne Lebsock, and James Sidbury. Not only that, he ignored free
African-American births and free black emancipators. Levy's most
outrageous claim is that white Virginians "freed more than one hundred
thousand slaves," 1782-1861 (p. 183). Levy cited James C. Ballagh, who,
noting no source, in fact stated in the passive voice that the 100,000
had been manumitted.
I tried to make these points in my recent /Journal of American History/
review. I trust Prof. Wolf's book will more than confirm the existing
scholarship concerning emancipation in Virginia.
Philip J. Schwarz
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