Slavery in United States survey textbooks

Journal of American History

Volumn 84, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 1425-1438

  Kolchin, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749832742     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2568089     Document Type: Review

References (88)

1. Because most textbooks are revised every three or four years, I have excluded those whose most recent edition appeared before 1994. Of the sampled volumes, 2 appeared in 1994, 3 in 1996, and 3 in 1997. I have looked only at the first volume of the full paperback version, not the condensed volume offered as an alternative.
2. George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History, 4th ed. (New York, 1996), I. Tindall and Shi's text costs $27.95; the other texts range in price from $40 to $49.
3. Because it is awkward to break page length into fractions smaller than one, figures are rough approximations; all percentages are rounded to the nearest integer.
4. For the Civil War period, figures are depressed by the automatic exclusion of slavery narrowly defined from postemancipation history (since slavery no longer existed); the low numbers for this period indicate inattention to slavery during the Civil War, not inattention to blacks during Reconstruction.
5. For convenience, after the first mention, each book is referred to in the text by its first author's surname; thus, Paul S. Boyer et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 3d ed. (2 vols., Lexington, Mass., 1996) is referred to as Boyer.
6. James Kirby Martin et al., America and Its Peoples: A Mosaic in the Making, 3d ed. (2 vols., New York, 1997), I, 401;
7. John M. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (2 vols., Fort Worth, 1996), I, 334, 648;
8. John Mack Faragher et al., Out of Many: A History of the American People, 2d ed. (2 vols., Upper Saddle River, 1997), I, 510;
9. Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, 4th ed. (2 vols., Boston, 1994), I, 496;
10. James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic, 2d ed. (2 vols., New York, 1994), I, 472;
11. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 204.
12. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 319;
13. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 402;
14. James A. Henretta et al., America's History, 3d ed. (2 vols., New York, 1997), I, 386;
15. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 334.
16. In 1860, Virginia contained 490,865 slaves in a total population of 1,596,318 (or 30.7%); the state's black population (slave and free), totaled 548,907 (34.4%). Excluding the population of what later became West Virginia, there were 472,494 slaves in a total population of 1,219,630 (38.7%). It is easy to make the kind of mistake that appears in the Henretta and Faragher texts, because statistical compilations are inconsistent in their treatment of West Virginia. One volume, for example, "excludes the area later set off as West Virginia" from Virginia's 1860 figures for total and for slave populations, but "includes the area later set off as West Virginia" in columns indicating Virginia's black and white populations; see Donald B. Dodd and Wynelle S. Dodd, Historical Statistics of the South, 1790-1970 (University, Ala., 1973), 58, 60, 62, 64.
17. Henretta et al., America's History, I, 388;
18. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 388-89;
19. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 334-35.
20. Janet Duitsman Cornelius, "When I Can Read My Title Clear": Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia, S.C., 1991).
21. Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill, 1979).
22. Norton et al., People and a Nation, I, 319-20;
23. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 404;
24. Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, I, 474-79;
25. Norton et al., People and a Nation, I, 323-24;
26. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 405;
27. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 388-90;
28. Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, I, 472-74;
29. Henretta et al., America's History, I, 391-92;
30. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, I, 363-64;
31. Tindall and Shi, America, I, 622-23;
32. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 324-26.
33. Tindall and Shi, America, I, 621;
34. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 320;
35. Norton et al., People and a Nation, I, 316-19;
36. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 399-402;
37. Henretta et al., America's History, I, 388.
38. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 382-94;
39. Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, I, 457-61, 470-79;
40. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 312-27;
41. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, I, 261-67, 333-35, 359-65;
42. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 370-72;
43. Henretta et al., America's History, I, 384-88;
44. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 391-98;
45. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, I, 261-67, 333-39.
46. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, I, 12-14, 38-40, 128-29, 337-39, 467-70, 518-24.
47. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, Ibid., 333-35, 359-65, 339, 365.
48. See John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, 1972);
49. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974);
50. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1730-1925 (New York, 1976).
51. Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, I, 50-51, 56-76;
52. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 61-63, 89-93;
53. Henretta et al., America's History, I, 48-50, 82-85;
54. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power, I, 334.
55. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 386;
56. Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, I, 472;
57. Faragher et al., Out of Many, I, 319;
58. Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, I, 402;
59. Tindall and Shi, America, I, 621.
60. On slave health and mortality, see especially Richard H. Steckel, "A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity" Journal of Economic History, 56 (Sept. 1986), 721-41;
61. Richard H. Steckel, "Work, Disease, and Diet in the Health and Mortality of American Slaves," in Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery: Conditions of Slave Life and the Transition to Freedom: Technical Papers, ed. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (2 vols., New York, 1992), II, 489-507;
62. Richard H. Steckel, "Women, Work, and Health under Plantation Slavery in the United States," in More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Bloomington, 1996), 43-60.
63. See, for example, Peter Kolchin, "Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective," Journal of American History, 70 (Dec. 1983), 579-601;
64. Laurence Shore, "The Poverty of Tragedy in Historical Writing on Southern Slavery," South Atlantic Quarterly, 85 (Spring 1986), 147-64;
65. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "The Mask of Obedience: Male Slave Psychology in the Old South," American Historical Review, 93 (Dec. 1988), 1228-52;
66. Clarence E. Walker, Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals (Knoxville, 1991), esp. xi-xviii;
67. Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill, 1992);
68. Brenda E. Stevenson, "Black Family Structure in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia: Amending the Revisionist Perspective," in The Decline in Marriage among African Americans: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Implications, ed. M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan (New York, 1995), 27-56;
69. Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York, 1996), esp. 206-57.
70. See Philip D. Morgan, "Work and Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1770 to 1880," William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (Oct. 1982), 563-99;
71. Philip D. Morgan, "The Ownership of Property by Slaves in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Low Country," Journal of Southern History, 49 (Aug. 1983), 399-420;
72. Lawrence T. McDonnell, "Money Knows No Master: Market Relations and the American Slave Community," in Developing Dixie: Modernization in a Traditional Society, ed. Winfred B. Moore Jr., Joseph F. Tripp, and Lyon G. Tyler (Westport, 1988), 31-44;
73. the special issue "The Slaves' Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas," ed. Ira Berlin and Philip D, Morgan, Slavery & Abolition (London), 12 (May 1991);
74. Roderick A. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1993);
75. Larry E. Hudson Jr., To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens, Ga., 1997).
76. Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, 2d ed. (2 vols., Boston, 1986), I. In comparing the two editions of Norton, I have focused on the part of Chapter 11 - "Slavery and the Growth of the South, 1800-1860" - that deals with the slaves themselves, 310-20 (2d ed.) and 316-28 (4th ed.).
77. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 4th ed., I, 320;
78. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 2d ed., I, 314;
79. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 4th ed., I, 321;
80. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 2d ed., I, 321;
81. Norton et al., People and a Nation, 4th ed., I, 329.
82. Tindali and Shi, America, I, 624;
83. Boyer et al., Enduring Vision, I, 382.
84. Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston, 1845).
85. The least expensive edition is published by Signet/New American Library. For good collections of interviews from the Federal Writers' Project, see Norman R. Yetman, ed., Life under the "Peculiar Institution": Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection (New York, 1970);
86. Charles L. Perdue Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Roben K. Phillips, eds., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Bloomington, 1980).
87. Equiano's narrative (originally 1789) is available in a new paperback edition from Bedford: Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Boston, 1995).
88. Drew Gilpin Faust, ed., The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge, 1981).