Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North [Paperback]

Christopher Malone (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415956978 | ISBN-13: 978-0415956970 | Publication Date: September 16, 2007

Between Freedom and Bondage looks at the fluctuations of black suffrage in the ante-bellum North, using the four states of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as examples. In each of these states, a different outcome was obtained for blacks in their quest to share the vote. By analyzing the various outcomes of state struggles, Malone offers a framework for understanding and explaining how the issue of voting rights for blacks unfolded between the drafting of the Constitution, and the end of the Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

Review

‘Between Freedom and Bondage is an engaging and informative study. Malone is particularly adept at maintaining the coherence of his thesis through what are often complex narratives of state-level politics.’ – Journal of American Studies

'Christopher Malone has written a fine book that illuminates a little known part of the uneven history of black disenfranchisement and enfranchisement in the Northern states during the decades before the Civil War. Malone shows that the basic democratic issue of who shall vote was intimately entwined with the role of race in the economy, in partisan competition, and ultimately in political culture.' – Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America

'A thoughtful examination of the politics of race in the antebellum North.'– Alexander Keyssar, author of The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

'The party names—Federalist, Whig, Democratic-Republican, Republican— have evolved and even rotated over 300 years, but Malone still draws a straight sociopolitical line between the North's original blue-blood, slave-holding revolutionaries of 1776, and today’s race politics of paternalism, on both sides of the ideological fence.' – Leon Wynter, author of American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America

'Malone has offered compelling insight into a neglected chapter in the history of the black franchise before the Fifteenth Amendment. Scholars interested in the differences in the antebellum years between the well-known racial liberalism of Massachusetts and the racial proscription of the rest of the North cannot afford to ignore this original book.' –Bruce Laurie, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Journal of Social History

About the Author

Christopher Malone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Pace University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (September 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415956978
• ISBN-13: 978-0415956970
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Between Freedom and Bondage-Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North, December 31, 2007

By 

Zilenziger "REBECCAZ.COM" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (Paperback)

Dr. Christopher Malone has documented with engaging precision a history full of considerable and interesting details. "Between Freedom and Bondage," instructs and pulls out the missing links to help us better understand the backdrop and living currents at work during the process of black emancipation; a time chock full of ideological flux, chaos and drive as early America pushed to define its moral and political self. This book must be required reading for all who study and teach American history.

"A thoughtful examination of the politics of race in the antebellum North." - Alexander Keyssar, author of
"The Right To Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States."

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Depiction of the Enfranchisement of African Americans in the Antebellum North, December 8, 2009

By 

Jessica Flores (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (Paperback)

"Between Freedom and Bondage" is a brilliant book that meticulously illustrates "race formation" and the shaping of American politics in the antebellum north. In this book, Dr. Christopher Malone depicts the enfranchisement of blacks due to the changing economic structure of racial conflict, the changing partisan structure of race affiliation and the changing discursive structure of racial coalition using New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts as exemplary case studies. Dr. Malone also includes fascinating quotes and actual zealous arguments from political, social and literary figures of the time throughout his text. "Between Freedom and Bondage" is an exceptional, incredibly well-researched and completely enthralling account of how African Americans gained the right to vote in the United States, and its links to present racial issues that still face us today.