The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 [Hardcover]

Stanley Harrold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

" Within the American antislavery movement, abolitionists were distinct from others in the movement in advocating, on the basis of moral principle, the immediate emancipation of slaves and equal rights for black people. Instead of focusing on the ""immediatists"" as products of northern culture, as many previous historians have done, Stanley Harrold examines their involvement with antislavery action in the South--particularly in the region that bordered the free states. How, he asks, did antislavery action in the South help shape abolitionist beliefs and policies in the period leading up to the Civil War? Harrold explores the interaction of northern abolitionist, southern white emancipators, and southern black liberators in fostering a continuing antislavery focus on the South, and integrates southern antislavery action into an understanding of abolitionist reform culture. He discusses the impact of abolitionist missionaries, who preached an antislavery gospel to the enslaved as well as to the free. Harrold also offers an assessment of the impact of such activities on the coming of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"He is most convincing about the singular role that Southern abolitionists and Northern ones operating in the slaveholding region played in shaping the crusade, a topic long misperceived. Those who study American reform will need this revisionist work." -- Bertram Wyatt-Brown, University of Florida

"Harrold reminds historians of antebellum reform that a number of Northern abolitionists left the comfort of middle-class parlors to join coadjutors in the South and risk violence, imprisonment, and death.... Argues forcefully that abolitionism must be viewed from the perspective of the contested Southern borderlands." -- Civil War History

"Harrold's bold, revisionist account of abolitionism in the antebellum period challenges the overwhelming emphasis in abolitionist scholarship on the movement's northern, and specifically New England, origins and influences." -- Florida Historical Quarterly

"Assigns a crucial role to southern abolitionists in shaping policy and causing proslavery forces in the South to react, eventually to secede from the Union." -- Georgia Historical Quarterly

"This is a path-breaking work that will significantly alter interpretations of abolitionism." -- James L. Huston, Oklahoma State University

"Forces the reader to reopen a number of crucial questions concerning antislavery activities across the spectrum of the movement." -- JASAT

"Challenges fundamental historiographical assumptions regarding the abolitionists' impact on the southern states and their role in causing the Civil War." -- Journal of American History

"A thoroughly researched, well-written, and thought provoking study that should take its place among required reading in the study of American abolitionism." -- Southern Historian

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky; First Edition edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813119065
• ISBN-13: 978-0813119069
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,942,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study of oft-neglected antislavery in the South., November 30, 1997

By 

Glenn M. Harden (Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 (Hardcover)

Stanley Harrold's well-written work is an important contribution to antislavery historiography. Taking to task those historians who see antislavery as primarily a movement to reform Northern society, Harrold demonstrates that Northern and Southern abolitionists were active in the South up until the Civil War. Furthermore, Harrold makes a convincing case that the very real abolitionist presence in the Upper South was a "precipitative cause of secession and the Civil War." For Harrold, the Southern response to the abolitionist threat was neither irrational or exaggerated. I commend Harrold's work to any student of antislavery or the antebellum South.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars to Amazon.com for having this fresh new work of history, September 25, 2009

By 

Beau "Startling absense of truth and fact in ... (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 (Paperback)

Years of revisions and the theories on education being dominated by government and puritans have concreted a world of myths around the War against the States that most of us are snared. Abraham Lincoln, not so much for the champion of emancipation (unless as a campaign slogan) but for his defeating of any rights of sovernity from the government, he is remembered like a Roman titan. Jefferson Davis is reduced to less than Lincoln's shadow.
Raceism as it exists all over our country today was just the same back then. And at one point or another the majority of Northern states groomed the instituion of slavery until more profits were to be had in the importation. (And many do not consider that banning of the international slave trade in the Southern states created one of the riffs that would iventually lead to war. Even so the North continued as merchants of flesh. Before the war in New Orleans Judah P. Benjamin who would later become a Jewish Confederate secretary of state lead a case defending a group of Africans that had revolted against their capturers on the high seas (no, not the Amisted). As the shipping company demanded full compistation and revenge, Juda Bnejamin exlaimed, " "What is a slave? He is a human being. He has feeling and passion and intellect. His heart, like the heart of the white man, swells with love, burns with jealousy, aches with sorrow, pines under restraint and discomfort, boils with revenge and ever cherishes the desire for liberty." He went on to say that they, like us, would conqure liberty of the chance presented itself.

This history has been buried in a brutal way. The Abolitionists & the South does not suggest that the majority of the population on both sides of the Potomac had old school rules of understanding their world. But for once it is not a side long page by page "concentrating on the mote in thy brother's eye rather than the beam in mine own" study we see so much in history telling. An industrial changing and growing North and the lazy, mean, fire breathing South. One story or another.

I think the student reading this work will also appreciate the variety of sources the author researched.