American slavery, American freedom
the ordeal of colonial Virginia
by Edmund Sears Morgan · first published 1975
75% recommend25% neutral
The men who came together to found the independent United States either held slaves or were willing to join hands with those who did. George Washington, hero of the Revolution, was the master of several hundred slaves. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, owned more than 200 men, women, and children while eloquently defending the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this classic work, originally published in 1976, through a meticulous history of Virginia from its earliest settlement through the seventeenth century boom in tobacco, the gradual replace
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American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan Best American history book I've read.
on “Ask HN: What books fundamentally changed the way you think about the world?” ↗The whole era was immensely corrupt. You might try reading Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom, which is a summary of one folly after another, even before getting to slavery. After going through all that, it's pretty amazing anything good at all came out of colonial Virginia.
on “Why Did Benedict Arnold Betray America? (2018)” ↗I encourage you to read American Slavery, American Freedom to help reconcile how and why this came about.
on “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro (1852)” ↗…reinvigorated the ancient republican values but did so in a setting of chattel slavery and settler colonialism, which caused white freedom to take its most virulent form. As Edmund S. Morgan explains in American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), white people could extol the entire republican package of equality, freedom, and democracy more effectively in a slave society than they could in a free one. As he puts it, what developed was…
on “Is Freedom White? (2020)” ↗