A fascinating look at a slice of history that may be unfamiliar to many general readers.
A new history of the 1830s anti-slavery movement and the unprecedented violence with which it was met.
Dickey focuses on several key abolitionist leaders, notably William Lloyd Garrison, easily the best-known figure of the movement’s early years. But as the author shows, Garrison was hardly alone. While he was a pioneering voice, he had a number of supporters and rivals for the leading role in the movement. Among them, silk merchants Lewis and Arthur Tappan “generously funded the movement as part of their social gospel of evangelical Christianity.” The brothers, write the author, “would go down in history as the money men behind the movement, but their role was much more pivotal.” James Forten, a Philadelphia sailmaker, and his daughters were among the most prominent Black abolitionists of the era. As Dickey’s title suggests, the movement had more than its share of opponents—not only Southerners who wanted to maintain the status quo, but also Northern business interests that had considerable stakes in their interactions with slaveholders as well as low-wage White workers who viewed African Americans as threats. Another major faction were colonizers, who supported returning ex-slaves to Africa, a program firmly opposed by Garrison and his allies. Dickey offers a well-documented history of how the abolition movement grew and changed over the years and of the race riots that swept Northern cities, including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The author also examines a recurring issue for the abolitionists: whether or not to defend themselves against the violence of their opponents. Garrison remained firmly committed to nonviolence despite a “near-lynching” in Boston in 1835. Interestingly, while many of the abolitionists based their beliefs on Christian doctrine, Garrison eventually came to distrust religion as an unreliable ally. Others, worn out by the epic struggle, retired in favor of younger abolition fighters such as Frederick Douglass.
A fascinating look at a slice of history that may be unfamiliar to many general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-928-9
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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