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reasie's review
3.0
It's dense, and I found the focus on bios and individuals breaking up the timeline disorienting.
When the title says "the problem of Slavery" what it really means is "What did people think or say about slavery" in the time period described. Still, I learned more about the revolution in Haiti and just how bloody and violent the fight for emancipation was -- things that get glossed over in history classes. A difficult read, but a rewarding one at times.
When the title says "the problem of Slavery" what it really means is "What did people think or say about slavery" in the time period described. Still, I learned more about the revolution in Haiti and just how bloody and violent the fight for emancipation was -- things that get glossed over in history classes. A difficult read, but a rewarding one at times.
socraticgadfly's review
5.0
Great, great book. Belongs next to the likes of Eric Foner's "Reconstruction" on bookshelves.
Davis tackles how issues such as colonization related to gradualism, and immediatism later on, in emancipation. In terms of the US, he also looks at the slave revolt on Saint Domingue (Haiti), British emancipation (and colonization on Sierra Leone before the US started the Liberia colonization) and more, and their effects on the US.
Among the biggest takeaways? Davis encourages us, especially us of more liberal mindset, to look more kindly upon the "colonizers." He notes that a number of blacks, as well as many whites, had the same sentiment that President Lincoln expressed to Frederick Douglass in 1864, that the social difference between the races could never be bridged in America. Other blacks felt that going to Liberia gave them the best chance of "proving themselves," both as individuals and as representatives of a race/ethnicity. And, a few went there for, at least in part if not mainly, mercenary/capitalistic reasons.
From there, Davis also talks about how both white and black abolitionists, on both sides of the pond, dealt with slaveholders and slaveholders' allies, comments about factory wage slavery.
Also, Davis documents the rise of racism circa 1830 or so, just as the North (except Connecticut, not until 1848, and New Jersey, in some narrow cases, not until 1865), completed emancipation, and how this interwined with emancipation for Southern blacks and more.
Davis tackles how issues such as colonization related to gradualism, and immediatism later on, in emancipation. In terms of the US, he also looks at the slave revolt on Saint Domingue (Haiti), British emancipation (and colonization on Sierra Leone before the US started the Liberia colonization) and more, and their effects on the US.
Among the biggest takeaways? Davis encourages us, especially us of more liberal mindset, to look more kindly upon the "colonizers." He notes that a number of blacks, as well as many whites, had the same sentiment that President Lincoln expressed to Frederick Douglass in 1864, that the social difference between the races could never be bridged in America. Other blacks felt that going to Liberia gave them the best chance of "proving themselves," both as individuals and as representatives of a race/ethnicity. And, a few went there for, at least in part if not mainly, mercenary/capitalistic reasons.
From there, Davis also talks about how both white and black abolitionists, on both sides of the pond, dealt with slaveholders and slaveholders' allies, comments about factory wage slavery.
Also, Davis documents the rise of racism circa 1830 or so, just as the North (except Connecticut, not until 1848, and New Jersey, in some narrow cases, not until 1865), completed emancipation, and how this interwined with emancipation for Southern blacks and more.
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