Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South [Paperback]

Ira Berlin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565840283 | ISBN-13: 978-1565840287 | Publication Date: October 1992

Slaves Without Masters is a vivid and moving history of the quarter of a million free blacks who lived in the South before the Civil War. First published to great acclaim in 1974, Slaves Without Masters established Ira Berlin as one of the outstanding historians of African American life in slavery and freedom. It traces the lives of free black men and women, portraying their struggle for community, liberty, economic independence, and education within an oppressive society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Slaves Without Masters rates with the best, for it combines careful scholarship, acute analysis, and an admirable historical imagination. -- The New Republic

About the Author

Ira Berlin is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, where he lives. He is the author of Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity and the co-editor of Remembering Slavery, Families and Freedom, and Slavery in New York (The New Press). His books have won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Abraham Lincoln Prize, among many other awards. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 423 pages
• Publisher: New Press (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565840283
• ISBN-13: 978-1565840287
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great book with lots of well researched facts, August 1, 2001

By 

s stone (anaheim, CA. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (Paperback)

I guess I am not reading the same book as the other guy. I saw this book as well written, well reasearched, relevant and extremely factual. Berlin's entire book is based on nothing but facts, and he has tons of sources that he refered to. He hs a lot of great refrences, old news papers(which are interesting to read), cogress meeting records, the laws of that time, the census, and lots of other great forms of accurate facts. "Slaves Without Masters" exposed a lot about a time period in american life that was very interesting for a "free" African-American. The book is about the free negroes in the antebellem south, which in most southern states were between 60 and 80 percent of the "free" African-American population, this would explain why we hear a lot in this book about Mulattos. THE MAIN BENEFIT OF THIS BOOK IS THAT IN A DOCUMENT PROVEN AND FACTUAL WAY, EVEN "FREE" PEOPLE CAN BE SLAVES.