The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, And the Ambiguities of American Reform [Paperback]

Steven Mintz (Author, Editor), John Stauffer (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2007

A collective effort to present a new kind of moral history, this volume seeks to show how the study of the past can illuminate profound ethical and philosophical issues. More specifically, the contributors address a variety of questions raised by the history of American slavery. How did freedom-personal, civic, and political-become one of the most cherished values in the Western world? How has the language of slavery been applied to other instances of exploitation and depersonalization? To what extent is America's high homicide rate a legacy of slavery? Did the abolitionist movement's tendency to view slavery as a product of sin, rather than as a structural and economic problem, accelerate or impede emancipation?

Divided into four parts, with introductions to each section by editors Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, the essays provide succinct guides to the evolution of American slavery, the origins of antislavery thought, the challenges of emancipation, and the post-emancipation legacy of slavery. They also offer fresh perspectives on key individuals, from Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass to Harriet Jacobs and John Brown, and shed new light on the differences between female and male critiques of slavery, the defense of slavery by the South's intellectual elite, and Catholic attitudes toward slavery and abolition.

Above all, The Problem of Evil helps us understand the circumstances that allow social evils to happen, how intelligent and ostensibly moral people can participate in the most horrendous crimes, and how, at certain historical moments, some individuals are able to rise above their circumstances, address evil in fundamental ways, and expand our moral consciousness.

In addition to the editors, contributors include Edward Balleisen, Ira Berlin, Iver Bernstein, Robert A. Bonner, Leslie Butler, Catherine Clinton, Ellen Dwyer, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, Michael Fellman, Paul Finkelman, Richard Wightman Fox, Jonathan Glickstein, Peter Hinks, Jack M. Holl, Paula Kane, Margaret Kellow, William Casey King, Laura Mitchell, Orlando Patterson, Randolph Roth, Sharon Hartman Strom, and David Waldstreicher.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For the most part, the essays confront moral issues within a specifically American context." --H-Net Reviews, January 2008

This book offers a wealth of solid knowledge and sharp insight into the conditions for regional war and peace. . . . Invaluable for the purposes of teaching, theorizing, and grasping the turbulent dynamics of global politics. --The International Journal on World Peace

From the Back Cover

"The Problem of Evil is indeed a very important theme that we have too long side-stepped as research scholars. It lingers next to or beneath so much scholarship on slavery, on war, on our heritage of racism and discrimination, on our study of violence generally. This is the dark side of the human condition and that, frankly, is where so much history that re-shapes society takes place. In America we still as a collective society have to remind ourselves of the evil embedded in our nature, our institutions, our past. Thus, the overall theme of this book is really important at this moment in history."--David W. Blight, author of "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 405 pages
• Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press (January 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558495703
• ISBN-13: 978-1558495708
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #909,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JOHN STAUFFER is Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Among the leading scholars of the Civil War era, antislavery, and interracial alliances, he is the author or editor of seven book and more than 50 articles. GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), received the 2009 Iowa Author's Award, a Boston Writer's Club award, and was a Boston Globe and Amazon.com bestseller and a History Book Club featured selection. His other books include The Writings of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist (2006), which showcases the work of the foremost black intellectual in the nineteenth century; The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform (with Steven Mintz, 2006); Meteor of War: The John Brown Story (with Zoe Trodd); and The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), a collective biography of black and white abolitionists that won four major awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Avery Craven Book Prize, and the Lincoln Prize runner-up.
John's essays have appeared in Time Magazine, Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Raritan, New York Sun, and 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography. He has appeared on national radio and television shows, including the Diane Rehm Show and Book TV with Susan Swain, and he has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe.
In 2006-08 John served as a consultant for the filmmaker Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Dave, Big, Pleasantville, The Tale of Desperaux), who has completed a screenplay and will direct a film on Unionism and interracial alliances in Civil War Mississippi. John co-authored a history of the story, The State of Jones, with Sally Jenkins, which was published by Doubleday in July 2009.
John received his M.A. from Purdue University in 1993 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999, when he began teaching at Harvard. He received tenure in 2004. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Deborah Cunningham, and their sons Erik Isaiah and Nicholas Daniel Stauffer.