It Wasn't About Slavery


Book Description

The Great Lie of the Civil War If you think the Civil War was fought to end slavery, you’ve been duped. In fact, as distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham argues in his provocative new book, It Wasn’t About Slavery, no political party advocated freeing the slaves in the presidential election of 1860. The Republican Party platform opposed the expansion of slavery to the western states, but it did not embrace abolition. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money and self-determination. Before the Civil War, the South financed most of the federal government—because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South that imported manufactured goods. Yet, most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence. Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern states seceded, and force was the only way to bring them—and their tariff money—back. That was the real cause of the war. A well-documented and compelling read by a master historian, It Wasn’t About Slavery will change the way you think about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the cause and legacy of America’s momentous Civil War.




It Wasn't About Slavery


Book Description

The Great Lie of the Civil War If you think the Civil War was fought to end slavery, you’ve been duped. In fact, as distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham argues in his provocative new book, It Wasn’t About Slavery, no political party advocated freeing the slaves in the presidential election of 1860. The Republican Party platform opposed the expansion of slavery to the western states, but it did not embrace abolition. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money and self-determination. Before the Civil War, the South financed most of the federal government—because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South that imported manufactured goods. Yet, most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence. Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern states seceded, and force was the only way to bring them—and their tariff money—back. That was the real cause of the war. A well-documented and compelling read by a master historian, It Wasn’t About Slavery will change the way you think about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the cause and legacy of America’s momentous Civil War.




It Wasn't About Slavery


Book Description

The Great Lie of the Civil War If you think the Civil War was fought to end slavery, you’ve been duped. In fact, as distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham argues in his provocative new book, It Wasn’t About Slavery, no political party advocated freeing the slaves in the presidential election of 1860. The Republican Party platform opposed the expansion of slavery to the western states, but it did not embrace abolition. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money and self-determination. Before the Civil War, the South financed most of the federal government—because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South that imported manufactured goods. Yet, most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence. Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern states seceded, and force was the only way to bring them—and their tariff money—back. That was the real cause of the war. A well-documented and compelling read by a master historian, It Wasn’t About Slavery will change the way you think about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the cause and legacy of America’s momentous Civil War.




Capitol Men


Book Description

In this grand and compelling new history of Reconstruction, Pulitzer Prize finalist Philip Dray shines a light on a little known group of men: the nation's first black members of Congress.




Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States


Book Description

This book proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the North did not go to war to free the slaves or end slavery. The North went to war because it faced economic annihilation and a Southern competitor that controlled the most demanded commodity on earth: cotton. The North's economy was based mostly on manufacturing for the South and shipping Southern cotton around the world. Cotton alone was 60% of U.S. exports in 1860. When the South seceded, the Northern economy began a dramatic collapse, and by war time, there were hundreds of thousands of hungry, unemployed Northerners in the street --- and the "tocsin of war" sounded. Economically ignorant Northern leaders then passed the astronomical Morrill Tariff that threatened to destroy the Northern shipping industry by rerouting trade away from the high-tariff North and into the low-tariff South. The Morrill Tariff was like pumping gasoline into an already raging fire. Abraham Lincoln was the first sectional president in American history. He was president of the North, and the North was clamoring for war. He saw an opportunity to start it without appearing to be the aggressor, so he took it. Thus, he started a war that killed 800,000 men and wounded a million. The idea that the good North was so outraged over slavery that they marched armies into the South to free the slaves is an absurdity of biblical proportions and this book proves it. This is an exciting, fast-paced 360 page book using over 200 sources with everything cited in footnotes and a bibliography. Part I proves that the economic annihilation of the North was what drove Lincoln to start the war. Part II proves the right of secession, which Horace Greeley believed in until he realized that secession meant an economic catastrophe for the North. Part III is the famous treatise by Charles W. Ramsdell, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," which proves conclusively that Abraham Lincoln started the War Between the States. Slavery was not the cause of the War Between the States, and this book makes the irrefutable argument. Here's what Dr. Clyde N. Wilson says about this book: Historians used to know - and it was not too long ago - that the War Between the States had more to do with economics than it did with slavery. The current obsession with slavery as the "cause" of the war rests not on evidence but on ideological considerations of the present day. Gene Kizer has provided us with the conclusive case that the invasion of the Southern States by Lincoln and his party (a minority of the American people) was due to an agenda of economic domination and not to some benevolent concern for slaves. This book is rich in evidence and telling quotations and ought to be on every Southern bookshelf. Clyde N. Wilson, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, University of South Carolina.




What Caused the Civil War?: Reflections on the South and Southern History


Book Description

“An extremely good writer, [Ayers] is well worth reading . . . on the South and Southern history.”—Stephen Sears, Boston Globe The Southern past has proven to be fertile ground for great works of history. Peculiarities of tragic proportions—a system of slavery flourishing in a land of freedom, secession and Civil War tearing at a federal Union, deep poverty persisting in a nation of fast-paced development—have fed the imaginations of some of our most accomplished historians. Foremost in their ranks today is Edward L. Ayers, author of the award-winning and ongoing study of the Civil War in the heart of America, the Valley of the Shadow Project. In wide-ranging essays on the Civil War, the New South, and the twentieth-century South, Ayers turns over the rich soil of Southern life to explore the sources of the nation's and his own history. The title essay, original here, distills his vast research and offers a fresh perspective on the nation's central historical event.




How the Word Is Passed


Book Description

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 'A beautifully readable reminder of how much of our urgent, collective history resounds in places all around us that have been hidden in plain sight.' Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish) Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - which offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping a nation's collective history, and our own. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our most essential stories are hidden in plain view - whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth or entire neighbourhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted. How the Word is Passed is a landmark book that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of the United States. Chosen as a book of the year by President Barack Obama, The Economist, Time, the New York Times and more, fans of Brit(ish) and Natives will be utterly captivated. What readers are saying about How the Word is Passed: 'How the Word Is Passed frees history, frees humanity to reckon honestly with the legacy of slavery. We need this book.' Ibram X. Kendi, Number One New York Times bestselling author 'An extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves.' Julian Lucas, New York Times Book Review 'The detail and depth of the storytelling is vivid and visceral, making history present and real.' Hope Wabuke, NPR 'This isn't just a work of history, it's an intimate, active exploration of how we're still constructing and distorting our history." Ron Charles, The Washington Post 'In re-examining neighbourhoods, holidays and quotidian sites, Smith forces us to reconsider what we think we know about American history.' Time 'A history of slavery in this country unlike anything you've read before.' Entertainment Weekly 'A beautifully written, evocative, and timely meditation on the way slavery is commemorated in the United States.' Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author




Everything You Were Taught about American Slavery Is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!


Book Description

If you're new to authentic Southern history, or you're just fed up with the mountain of lies, slander, disinformation, and pro-North propaganda found in our South-bashing history books, "Everything You Were Taught About American Slavery is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!" will be a joyful revelation. This important 1,000 page work by award-winning author, Southern historian, and slavery scholar Lochlainn Seabrook decimates the fictitious, deceitful, purposefully misleading view of slavery annually churned out by Yankee mythologists, writers, filmmakers, and bloggers. Lavishly illustrated with over 500 rare and intriguing images, a helpful world slavery time line, and a detailed index of significant historical figures, Mr. Seabrook lays out the truth about the "peculiar institution," a truth that has been nefariously suppressed for centuries by enemies of the South and the politically correct. Did you know, for instance, that Africa was enslaving her own people thousands of years before the transatlantic slave trade; that white American slavery laid the foundation for black American slavery; that Africa enslaved 1.5 million whites in the 1700s; that genuine slavery was never practiced in the American South; that both the American slave trade and slavery got their start in the North; that the American abolition movement began in the South; that five times more blacks fought for the Confederacy than for the Union? Did you know that there were thousands of African-American and Native-American slave owners in early America, and that less than 5 percent of white Southerners owned slaves; that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave-and was not meant to; that until the last day of his life Abraham Lincoln campaigned to have all blacks deported to Africa; and that Jefferson Davis abolished the foreign slave trade before Lincoln did and adopted a black boy during the War? These and thousands of other little known facts will astound, fascinate, and enlighten. In support of his in-depth research the author provides hundreds of eyewitness accounts - dating from the 1600s to the early 20th Century - firsthand testimony clearly illustrating how American slavery came to be, how it was actually practiced, and how both European-Americans and African-Americans viewed it and experienced it. With 21 chapters, nearly 3,500 endnotes, and a comprehensive 2,000 book bibliography, this well investigated yet easy-to-read work - the result of over 20 years of research - is a must-read for every serious student of American history, Southern history, and American slavery. Its release will require every history book to be rewritten. You will never look at slavery the same way again. The foreword is by African-American educator Barbara G. Marthal, B.A., M.Ed. Civil War scholar Lochlainn Seabrook, a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal and a descendant of numerous Confederate soldiers, is the sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford and the author of over forty popular books for all ages. A seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage who is known as the "new Shelby Foote," Seabrook has a forty-year background in the American Civil War, Confederate studies, Southern biography, and international slavery, and is the author of the companion bestseller, "Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!"




The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery


Book Description

“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.




The Half Has Never Been Told


Book Description

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy. Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.