Reviews

The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution by Gary B. Nash

paigeturner26's review

emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.25

One of the better history books I’ve been “forced” to read. I would pay for a personal copy someday to annotate for myself :)

kayacore's review

i was somehow interested but also so bored

kkmcore's review

i was somehow interested but also so bored

philli17's review

Only read what I had to for class. Very interesting though 

margaretefg's review

3.0

I think I read this before, or some of it. Published in 2006, I was surprisingly disappointed, but that's probably a misremembering on my part. The focus is less on African American agency in the revolutionary era, and more on how white elites (and not) envisioned race and citizenship over the course of the revolutionary period (up to the Missouri Compromise.) There's a deep dive into the arguments that slavery could not have been abolished in the early days of the Republic because of the intransigence of SC and GA. Nash disagrees, and points to a lack of leadership and courage on the part of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Franklin. He shows how strong abolitionist sentiment was among some prominent Virginia enslavers and how there were multiple manumissions. And in a later chapter, he explores how white writers shifted their rhetoric on slavery, race and citizenship as the cotton/textile revolution heated up. Useful, but maybe Forging Freedom is better for exploring African American agency and community?