Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777–1865

Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900

by Patrick Rael

Why did it take so long to end slavery in the United States, and what did it mean that the nation existed eighty-eight years as a “house divided against itself,” as Abraham Lincoln put it? The decline of slavery throughout the Atlantic world was a protracted affair, says Patrick Rael, but no other nation endured anything like the United States. Here the process took from 1777, when Vermont wrote slavery out of its state constitution, to 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery nationwide.

Rael immerses readers in the mix of social, geographic, economic, and political factors that shaped this unique American experience. He not only takes a far longer view of slavery’s demise than do those who date it to the rise of abolitionism in 1831, he also places it in a broader Atlantic context. We see how slavery ended variously by consent or force across time and place and how views on slavery evolved differently between the centers of European power and their colonial peripheries―some of which would become power centers themselves.

Rael shows how African Americans played the central role in ending slavery in the United States. Fueled by new Revolutionary ideals of self-rule and universal equality―and on their own or alongside abolitionists―both slaves and free blacks slowly turned American opinion against the slave interests in the South. Secession followed, and then began the national bloodbath that would demand slavery’s complete destruction.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, African American, American History, Race

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2015

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

* I received this as a free eBook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. *

The subtitle of this book is “The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777 – 1865” and in all honesty that is a bit misleading. Although the book’s main focus is on those years, when I read the prologue, “A House Divided”, I soon realized it touches on a much longer time period. At 26 pages it is quite a lengthy introduction but I highly recommend you DO NOT skip the reading. In fact the whole book packs quite a wallop – coming in at just shy of a page count of four hundred – the information Mr. Rael manages to incorporate is commendable – DO NOT skim over any of the pages.

Before Mr. Rael even begins on the history of slavery in the United States he gives his reader some excellent background of slavery in various societies, countries and eras. He explains how and why it was deemed “acceptable” to treat other human beings simply as “chattel to be bought and sold in the marketplace”.

Following his interesting and (for me) illuminating introduction the book is clearly divided into four sections:

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION and THE EARLY REPUBLIC are the two sections where Mr. Rael explores the historical precedents to slavery, the reasons slavery was embraced and enforced and the history of the revolutions leading to abolition in different parts of the world. As slavery was first embraced in various countries and then subsequently abolished, why was America the last country to come to terms with abolishing slavery? What were the social, political, religious and social ramifications of freeing those people so many considered property?

“Writing of the slaves to early British abolitionist Granville Sharp, (Anthony) Benezet asked, “Did not he that made them make us, and did not One fashion us before we were born?”

Examining these factors was an excellent stepping-stone to the following section …

In THE AGE OF IMMEDIATIONISM Mr. Rael explores how politics and the antebellum south slowed the resistance to slavery in the United States. How owning slaves empowered the southern plantation owners not only economically but politically as well. Most interestingly, he also delves into how the enslaved African-Americans began to revolt, sometimes through legal means and sometimes through violence, against their own oppression.

“In indirect but crucial ways, then, African Americans deeply shaped the breakdown of the party system and its reformulation around the slavery issue.”

The title of the last section of this book is self explanatory, THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. Mr. Rael takes a looks at the ramifications of the free north versus the slave holding south. Neither side wanted to budge in their beliefs and there was no choice but to fight for a truly “united” United States. The Civil War started as a conflict about succession rather than slavery, but as the battles got bloodier and the toll on human life became out of control, slaves were conscripted. Once they agreed to fight for not only their own emancipation but for their country how could giving them freedom not be considered?

“Only military desperation had driven the Union to abolish slavery.”

In the last pages of this section the author moves forward (rather quickly) to the fallout of abolitionism including touching on subjects such as the now “free” black population being given the right to vote, have religious freedom and the ability to receive an education.

“Governor Michael Hahn, suggesting the possibility of granting the right to vote to African Americans. ‘I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people might not be let in – as, for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.”

He goes on to explore the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan, segregation and “the national acquiescence to the grave injustices of the Jim Crow era.”

“No African American could have missed the point. The war for the union may have been over, but the one for equality had just begun.”

This book definitely deserves a FIVE STAR rating but before I get into why I feel it deserves that rating and onto my personal impressions of the book I think I need to put my choice of this book into a little perspective. Let’s face it, if you have a look at my normal reading preferences this is not the type of book I usually pick up for some relaxing reading on any given evening. So why? In my life is a fellow book lover, so by default, someone I frequently discuss books with, who for various reasons has became very interested in this topic and how it leads to current civil rights and injustices. When there is someone with whom you discuss books it is very nice to understand a little bit of what they are talking about. When it came to this particular topic I frequently had to plead ignorance. My knowledge of slavery issues begins and ends with reading “Mandingo”, learning about Canada’s role in the “Underground Railway” and watching “Roots”. I wanted to rectify that but not at the expense of the amount of my time it would take to read dozens (if not hundreds) of books on the subject. Quite frankly, I needed a “Cliff’s Notes” version. I by no means have the intention of negating or insulting Mr. Rael’s book with that comparison (it, honestly, should be taken as a compliment), the term merely simplifies what I was looking for – a clear, concise book on that period of U.S. history. Eighty-Eight Years absolutely fit the bill. For someone like myself this book was absolutely full of the type of information I was looking for in that condensed, readable, highly understandable and well laid out format.

I greatly appreciated that Mr. Rael followed a chronological time-line. He included what was happening in other countries at the same time to put things into very clear prospective for his reader. In a book of this type, by necessity, there are extensive footnotes for quotes and excerpts for other works. To Mr. Rael’s credit I did not feel the need to flip back and forth between the text and the footnotes to understand a reference or clarify what I was reading … but they were there if I chose to do so. My biggest apprehension when I requested this book for review was that I would be reading a textbook. Admittedly, I found myself starting to jot down notes when I first started reading. Thankfully, I could quickly put an end to that since I realized the things I had jotted down were quickly made clear as I continued reading.

“Now imagine another Virginia slave, on another summer night, some hundred miles to the south of the Richmond where Gabriel had launched his uprising thirty one years earlier.”

That was the first line of the third section. Mr. Rael moved to a conversational tone to write about the more personal impact slavery had at the time. I appreciated that change. As important as the dates and historical data were, this is point where I began to clearly understand and thoroughly enjoy learning about the people and the history. That may not be a turning point for everyone reading this book, but it completely met my personal needs.

I’ve gone on long enough for a book review; so let me close by repeating that I found this to be an excellent concise and understandable version of this period of American history. Eighty-Eight Years includes enough references and sources anyone looking for more information can use this book as a springboard to more in-depth works or be completely satisfied (as I am) at the end that they have educated themselves about this important part of history.

Mr. Rael sums it up best with his last line …

“As these pages detail, the long and complex history of total emancipation in the United States involved innumerable social and political actors. Perhaps more than any other group, though, these neglected Americans may deserve credit for bringing slavery to its knees.”

This book releases on August 15, 2015.

On a personal note:

This book did peak my interest and I appreciated Mr. Rael’s writing style so I would be interested if he decided to write a similar book about the next 90 years of the racial history. Who would have imagined I could want a “sequel” to a history text?

[Robert Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historian Patrick Rael’s “Eighty-Eight” years is actually two books in one. As a serviceable, meat and potatoes summary of America’s racial history though Reconstruction, “Eighty-Eight Years” is useful. As an insightful study into the origins of America’s unique relationship to race and power, “Eighty-Eight Years” is profound. In weaving both works into one comprehensible monograph, Rael has created something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Over the last six decades, Civil War historiography has evolved to acknowledge the inextricable link between the war and the story of slavery and its demise. Rael’s book, while obviously in that tradition, goes a step further in that by situating the American brand of slavery as it evolved in North America within the context of competing New World models, slavery becomes the central animating tension in an arc to which the Civil War is simply one (albeit vital) signal element. Indeed, although purporting to be the story of slavery and abolition from 1777 to 1865 (hence, eighty-eight years), Rael nonetheless draws richly (and importantly) from the pre-revolutionary story of Atlantic New World colonization as well as the story of post-Civil War Reconstruction and Redemption. Although these efforts come at the cost of fidelity to the book’s pithy title, they are nonetheless critical periods within the historical arc Rael illuminates.

Slavery was ubiquitous within the New World social order. The way that America came to terms with slavery and ultimately came to abolished it, however, was unique. Situated within its longer than advertised historical arc and set among the experiential trajectories of competing New World colonization models, the book explores the nature of this uniqueness, and thereby presents a challenging, yet comprehensible thesis regarding the evolved (and, perhaps to this day, evolving) American conceptions of both liberty and slavery - one that fuses the various economic, social, geographical and, through the influence of the Enlightenment, philosophical elements that propelled the launch, for good and for ill, of American’s experiment in liberal democracy and the path Americans then took to resolve that democracy’s most galling hypocrisy; slavery in the land of the free.

Rael’s fusion of international, multicultural explorations of New World slavery with the unique American experience is, however, not entirely seamless. The first third is very heavy on illuminating and insightful Atlantic Word comparisons, and then transitions into a well written, yet very utilitarian recitation of American Civil War and Reconstruction history. In the last third, Rael returns (somewhat) to comparing the American experience to the experience of other nations that came to be formed on the Western Hemisphere; yet these comparisons fail to inspire the same sense of “new and helpful insight” that he achieved in the book’s first third. He ends his story, for example, with the disheartening counter revolution of Redemption without returning in any meaningful way to a comparative discussion of emancipatory outcomes in, say, the Caribbean, Central and South America or, perhaps most significantly, Brazil.

As a book, “Eighty-Eight Years” is very “tightly packed” – every sentence matters, every event Rael recounts is relevant; it is not the kind of book where you can mentally doze off in the middle of a chapter and hope to reawaken several pages later still visiting the same theme. Rael covers a lot of ground, and he does not dawdle as he covers it. As a result, the book remains fresh, interesting and, above all, challenging from the first page to the last.

“Eighty-Eight Years” added significantly to my understanding of both America’s racial history and the American Civil War. It’s a fascinating, challenging read, and one that I highly recommend.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777–1865
by Patrick Rael

from the library

Contents:
A house divided --
The Slave Power --

The Age of Revolution.
Impious prayers : slavery and the revolution
Half slave and half free : the founding of the United States --

The Early Republic.
A house dividing : Atlantic slavery and abolition in the era of the early republic
To become a great nation : caste and resistance in the age of emancipations --

The Age of Immediatism.
Minds long set on freedom : rebellion, Metropolitan abolition, and sectional conflict
Ere the storm come forth : antislavery militance and the collapse of party politics --

The Civil War and Reconstruction.
This terrible war : secession, civil war, and emancipation
One hundred years : reconstruction
What peace among the whites brought.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be really informative and easy to follow. What I especially liked was that it touched on slavery world-wide, not just in the United States. Of course, the majority of the book dealt with the Civil War and Reconstruction, but it was interesting to read how changes in the attitudes of slavery in one area affected another area. Recommended if you need to learn more about this topic!

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A learned, lucid, wide-ranging study of the rise of abolitionism in America but also interestingly examined in a broader Atlantic context.