Facing a seven-hour drive, I picked up this audiobook so that I wouldn’t have to listen to a business book for that long in one day. The author David Blight had won a Pulitzer Prize and is renowned for his annals of African-American history. I knew his writing to be eloquent and clear, and his observations of human nature, compassionate and acute. I had great hopes for this drive, and thankfully, with Blight’s erudite help,…
David Blight is an eminent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian interested in the role of race in American history. Many think that American attitudes about race were “solved” by the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Those battles were won by the Union and not the Confederacy, right? This book seeks to chronicle how in the 50 years after emancipation (until around World War I), southern states and the promotion of “Lost Cause” ideology won a place…
Jeannette Bébinn is the daughter of a plantation owner in Louisiana in the 1840s and 1850s. Her black mother, whom her white father enslaved, died during childbirth. Jeannette can “pass” as white. Her father dotes on her and invests in her during her youth, much to the ire of her father’s jealous, white wife. When Jeannette’s father dies suddenly, this wife finds out that her late husband skipped a generation in his will by deeding…
I first heard the Crafts’ story as a student in American History class in a South Carolina high school. My teacher shared how the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was first tested with a couple in Boston who recently escaped slavery. Mass protests made a mockery of the enslavers’ efforts, the Crafts eluded capture by escaping, and the slave-catchers returned to Georgia empty-handed. I remember that the story seemed more complicated than that, but even…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words were written by an enslaver who held to white supremacy, yet they inspired a nation and inspire it still. A few (like Dr. King) have reached Lincoln’s heights, but no one has surpassed his personal struggle for a union without…
The American Civil War comprises one of the most complex stories in a complex nation’s almost-250-year history. Further, the Christian religion is its own complex entity, even when just restricted to the southern states. In this work, Peterson seeks to combine both subjects in a study of the work of chaplains in the Confederate armies. He does a detailed job in collecting primary sources about southern religiosity during the war. However, on the historical front,…
Recent events remind us that America – especially the South – is still haunted by the oft-unspoken tale of the Civil War. This tale, Scott’s first novel, shows us why. It reminds us of the myriad of lives forever altered by this event and that simple narratives of good-versus-evil fall short. It showcases decency of many Southerners, the hideousness of slavery, and lives caught in a tale of lost-and-found. Apparently, the author received in the…
This Memorial Day is appropriate to celebrate one of our nation’s forgotten saviors. Although Lincoln is often credited with guiding the nation’s rebirth by preserving the Union, none of this would have happened without Ulysses S. Grant’s leadership. Still, Grant is often denigrated as an inept drunk and a butcher of soldiers. This view simply was not shared among his contemporaries who viewed his grace in Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse as foundational in national…